NATIONAL    AND    SOCIAL 
PROBLEMS 


MACMILLAN  AND  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON    •    BOMBAY    •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW   YORK    •    BOSTON    •   CHICAGO 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


NATIONAL  &  SOCIAL 
PROBLEMS 


BY 

FREDERIC    HARRISON 


MACMILLAN   AND    CO.,    LIMITED 
ST.  MARTIN'S  STREET,  LONDON 

1908 


COPYRIGHT  1908 
Bv  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


EDWARD   SPENCER  BEESLY 


JOHN  HENRY  BRIDGES 


CONTENTS 


ESSAY 


PAGE 


INTRODUCTION      ...  .         .        ix 

PART    I 
NATIONAL   PROBLEMS 


1.  BISMARCKISM  :   THE  POLICY  OF  BLOOD  AND  IRON  .          3 

2.  THE  DUTY  OF  ENGLAND    .  .          .                            35 

3.  FRANCE  AFTER  WAR            .  .                    .71 

4.  LEON  GAMBETTA       .          .  .97 

5.  THE  MAKING  OF  ITALY      .  116 

Cavour       ...  .130 

Garibaldi   .          .          .  .....      146 

6.  AFGHANISTAN    ...  .      163 

7.  THE  ANTI-AGGRESSION  LEAGUE  .          .  .184 

8.  EGYPT    .                             .  .                             .     195 

9.  THE  BOKR  WAR       .  .     225 

10.  THE  STATE  OF  SIEGE         .  .                   .229 

11.  EMPIRE  AND  HUMANITY     .  .                             .     244 


viii    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

PART   II 
SOCIAL   PROBLEMS 

ESSAY  PAGE 

1.  THE  LIMITS  OF  POLITICAL  ECONOMY   .  .271 

2.  TRADES-UNIONISM    ......     307 

3.  INDUSTRIAL  CO-OPERATION  ...         .          .     333 

4.  SOCIAL  REMEDIES      .         .         .         .         .  37? 

5.  SOCIALIST  UNIONISM  .          .         •         .         .421 

6.  MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  SOCIALISM       .         .         .     440 


NATIONAL   AND    SOCIAL    PROBLEMS 

The  essential  principle  of  modern  society  is  to  bring  all  political 
action  under  the  control  of  moral  duty. — COMTE. 

INTRODUCTION 

THIS  book — being  an  appeal  to  international  morality 
and  a  plea  for  social  regeneration  —  develops  the 
principles  laid  down  in  two  preceding  works  :  the 
first,  on  religious  belief;  the  second,  on  philosophic 
thought. 

In  The  Creed  of  a  Layman  I  traced  the  growth  of 
my  own  convictions  from  a  theologic  to  a  scientific 
Faith.  In  The  Philosophy  of  Common  Sense  I  dealt 
with  the  intellectual  grounds  on  which  a  human 
religion  must  be  based.  The  natural  complement 
of  these  treatises  is  to  show  this  system  of  philosophic 
religion  in  action.  Let  us  observe  its  practical  effect 
in  moulding  opinion  on  the  great  questions  of  Nations 
and  of  Society:  on  patriotism,  international  justice, 
government ;  and  again,  on  problems  of  Wealth,  of 
Labour,  of  Socialism. 

Theology,  absorbed  in  matters  of  Worship  and 
hopes  of  Heaven,  has  no  call  to  meddle  with  earthly 
politics,  to  offer  counsel  to  secular  rulers,  or  to 


x    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS  , 

propound  any  scheme  for  reorganising  society.  Its 
kingdom  is  not  of  this  world  ;  and  it  seldom  intrudes 
on  worldly  affairs  without  adding  to  the  conflicts  and 
the  perplexities  it  finds.  A  human  religion,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  bound  by  its  creed  to  preach  a  humane 
standard  in  politics,  to  work  for  a  new  earth,  if  it 
cannot  promise  a  new  heaven.  It  would  belie  its 
name  and  betray  its  truth  if  its  first  duty  were  not 
to  show  how  the  world  of  to-day  might  be  made 
better,  how  a  happier  future  here  might  be  secured 
for  our  descendants  ;  how  international  strife  should 
be  abated,  and  class  wars  merged  in  a  moral  and 
religious  Socialism. 

Accordingly,  at  the  close  of  a  long  and  somewhat 
active  life, — a  life  entirely  detached  from  any  party 
interest  or  personal  ambition, — I  collect  and  re-edit 
a  few  of  the  essays  which  I  wrote  on  various  questions, 
national  or  social.  The  lightning  reviewer  may  perhaps 
call  them  "  ancient  history  " ;  for  they  concern  periods 
before  his  own  memory,  of  which  he  seldom  reads 
in  books.  But  these  topics  are  not  "  ancient  history  " 
except  so  far  as  they  deal  with  great  events,  whereof 
the  consequences  have  to  be  faced  still,  for  they  form 
the  burning  problems  of  statesmanship  in  our  own 
generation. 

I  do  not  hesitate  to  reissue  studies  that  are  thirty, 
even  forty  years  old  ;  for  the  same  forces  are  still 
dominant  and  the  same  dilemmas  are  still  unsolved. 
Vital  problems  concerning  France,  Germany,  and 
Italy  ;  our  own  problems  in  Egypt,  South  Africa, 
and  India  are  as  much  alive  to-day  as  they  were  in 
the  'sixties,  the  'seventies,  or  the  'eighties.  The 
errors,  adventures,  crimes  of  a  previous  generation 
are  more  in  evidence  than  ever,  grow  ever  more 
perplexing  and  dangerous. 

The    party  politician   who    "has    put    his    money 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

on  the  wrong  horse,"  the  journalist  on  the  eve  of 
a  division  who  has  had  to  defend  or  to  denounce  a 
minister,  may  well  hesitate  in  after  years  to  print 
the  speech  he  made  or  the  article  he  wrote  on  the  spur 
of  the  moment. 

It  is  a  test  of  solid  principles,  whether  on  national 
or  social  questions,  that  they  are  not  evanescent  with 
every  temporary  crisis,  but  serve  to  explain  the  past  as 
well  as  to  guide  the  future.  The  lapse  of  a  generation 
only  justifies  a  view  of  events  which  had  behind  it 
principles  and  convictions  maintained  throughout  a 
long  life.  I  have  found  almost  nothing  to  qualify  in 
the  judgment  which  I  passed  at  the  time  on  the  great 
events  and  the  dominant  personalities  of  the  nineteenth 
century. 

The  busy  politician  and  the  publicist  of  the  hour 
is  concerned  with  nothing  but  the  question  of  the 
day  ;  and  he  is  impatient  of  any  reminder  of  the 
controversies  which  took  place  when  he  was  at  school. 
But  he  cannot  understand  the  present — much  less  can 
he  settle  its  difficulties — unless  he  knows  their  origin 
and  the  inheritance  of  evils  which  they  bear.  The 
occupation  of  Egypt,  the  series  of  wars  and  of 
adventures  this  involved,  remain  still  urgent  questions. 
This  goes  to  the  root  of  the  problem  of  Empire  and 
its  consequences.  So  do  the  long  series  of  wars, 
annexations,  and  troubles  in  South  Africa.  So,  too, 
the  series  of  wars,  annexations,  imperial  difficulties  in 
India.  I  am  well  aware  of  the  vast  improvement 
effected  in  the  material  and  administrative  condition 
of  Egypt.  I  do  justice  to  the  recent  efforts  made  to 
heal  the  South  African  imbroglio.  Nor  am  I  blind  to 
the  splendid  services  of  many  able  and  patriotic  men, 
at  home  and  abroad,  to  grapple  with  the  tremendous 
tasks  that  India  has  imposed  on  its  conquerors. 

All  this  is  plain  ;  and  I  am  the  last  man  to  forget 


xii    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

it  or  to  dispute  it.  But  I  see  that  the  real  dilemma 
of  the  Egyptian  problem  began  with  the  occupation 
of  1882: — or  rather  long  before,  when  governments 
became  entangled  in  the  financial  and  administrative 
enormities  of  the  Egyptian  tyrants.  I  trace  the  chaos 
and  desolation  of  South  Africa  to  similar  follies  and 
offences  of  imperialist  demagogues.  The  blunders, 
extravagances,  and  crimes  of  our  Afghan  expeditions 
have  been  often  repeated  since,  and  raise  the  whole 
question  of  imperial  expansion  and  imperial  domina- 
tion. Empire,  alas !  is  not  "ancient  history."  It  is 
the  insoluble  ever-present  problem  of  to-day  in  all  our 
national  affairs.  And,  as  Empire  is  the  real  subject  of 
the  first  Part  of  this  book,  so  I  am  forced  to  illustrate 
my  argument  by  referring  to  past  events  in  Egypt, 
South  Africa,  and  India — just  as  I  begin  by  tracing 
the  modern  race  after  Empire  to  the  sinister  ambition 
of  a  Napoleon,  a  Bismarck,  a  Beaconsfield. 

It  would  be  idle  to  consider  the  state  of  France 
without  tracing  it  to  the  evils  of  the  second  Empire,  to 
consider  the  state  of  modern  Europe  without  tracing 
it  to  the  malign  genius  of  Bismarck,  to  probe  the  evils 
of  our  own  imperial  craze  without  ascribing  them  to 
Disraeli  and  his  pupils.  A  systematic  analysis  of 
Empire  is  bound  to  start  with  Bismarck,  and  to  trace 
back  our  present  difficulties  to  our  dealings  with  South 
Africa,  India,  and  Egypt. 

These  pages  were  all  in  type  when  the  very  import- 
ant work  of  Lord  Cromer  appeared.  It  is  a  record  of 
magnificent  success  in  imperial  administration  and  of 
patient  statesmanship.  But  it  reveals  to  a  thoughtful 
reader  the  complex  burdens  which  the  occupation  of 
Egypt  laid  on  our  nation  ;  nor  does  it  show  that,  in 
twenty -five  years  of  prolonged  effort,  these  burdens 
have  been  abated ;  much  less  how  they  are  to  be 
closed  in  the  future. 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

The  essays  in  this  book  all  deal  with  the  year  1882 
— before  the  occupation  of  Egypt  began.  Why  was  that 
occupation  a  necessity  to  England,  when  France  with- 
drew from  it,  and  even  sacrificed  her  great  statesman  ? 
Why  was  it  necessary  "  to  crush  Arabi  and  his  party  "  ? 
Why  was  England  to  involve  herself  in  international 
dilemmas  to  enable  speculators  to  secure  their  usurious 
dividends  ?  The  entire  adventure  of  bloodshed  and 
oppression  falls  back  always  on  "  financial  interests." 

I  believe  that  these  papers  will  prove  useful  as  histori- 
cal documents.  They  are  the  record  of  revolutionary 
and  national  upheavals  in  the  light  they  appeared  to  a 
contemporary  observer,  who  was  also  an  eye-witness 
of  tremendous  events  and  in  personal  touch  with  some 
of  the  chief  actors  therein.  Many  politicians  and  most 
publicists  are  without  any  long  memory  of  events  and 
persons.  They  know  little  of  what  was  stirring  the 
world  a  generation  or  two  ago,  when  they  were  at 
school.  History  they  know  from  books.  But  of  that 
intermediate  period,  a  generation  or  two  ago,  they 
know  little  either  from  literature,  or  from  memory,  or 
from  tradition.  And  yet  the  things  which  so  keenly 
moved  their  own  fathers  are  the  problems  and  dilemmas 
which  are  left  to  them  unsolved. 

All  this  remains  to  them  a  blurred  and  often  a  dis- 
torted sketch.  I  invite  them  now  to  look  at  a  few 
pictures  painted  at  the  time — in  rather  warm  tones  and 
in  sharp  contrasts  of  light  and  shade,  it  may  be — but 
pictures  which  truly  portrayed  the  alarms,  the  passions, 
the  hopes,  the  enthusiasms  of  the  hour. 

Nor  do  I  think  these  papers,  old  as  many  of  them  are, 
will  be  found  by  any  serious  reader  to  be  stale  reprints. 
Many  of  them  were  pamphlets  and  manifestoes  issued 
by  special  societies,  or  circulated  in  quarters  wholly 
unknown  to  the  public  of  to-day.  The  essays  which 
appeared  in  periodicals  were  published  so  long  ago  that 


xiv     NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  present  generation  never  saw  them  nor  heard  of 
their  existence.  Practically  the  whole  of  this  book  is 
new  matter  ;  and  I  should  be  surprised  if  the  reader 
should  find  any  part  of  it  familiar  to  him.  It  may 
astonish  him  to  notice  opinions  of  mine  for  which  he 
may  not  have  been  prepared  to  give  me  credit. 

I  am  neither  a  party  politician  nor  a  doctrinaire 
dogmatist.  I  profess  myself  bound  by  no  man's  dicta 
nor  by  any  party  watchwords.  Trained  in  the  general 
principles  of  Positivist  sociology,  I  am  ready  to  accept 
the  opportunist  aims  of  practical  statesmen,  when  not 
in  open  conflict  with  moral  principle.  I  have  learned 
much  in  politics  from  Carlyle,  Francis  Newman, 
Bagehot,  Michelet,  Mazzini,  Peel,  John  Bright,  John 
Morley,  Gladstone ;  and  in  economics  from  Mill, 
Cobden,  Spencer,  Ruskin,  Henry  George,  and  William 
Morris ;  but  I  profess  myself  bound  by  no  man's 
school.  Nor  can  I  accept  the  current  labels  which  it 
is  the  fashion  to  assume  as  party  badges  or  to  bandy 
about  as  party  nicknames. 

A  Republican  by  conviction  in  the  abstract,  I  am 
the  reverse  of  a  hidebound  Democrat.  With  a  deep 
loathing  for  mere  Militarism,  I  could  never  join  any 
kind  of  Peace  Society.  Ardent  patriot  as  I  am,  I  re- 
pudiate the  tinsel  Imperialism  of  blatant  demagogues. 
With  a  hatred  of  all  forms  of  race  oppression,  I  stand 
clear  of  the  Quixotic  humanitarianism  which  clamours 
to  rush  into  every  case  of  national  wrong-doing.  I  can- 
not call  myself  Radical,  Whig,  or  Tory  ;  nor  do  I  find 
such  essential  differences  in  the  acts  of  any  one  of  the 
recognised  parties  in  the  State.  I  have  sometimes  been 
called  a  Conservative  revolutionist ;  but  I  must  give 
my  own  interpretation  to  any  such  term  before  I 
could  accept  it. 

Nor  on  the  social  problems  could  I  accept  any 
one  of  the  familiar  labels.  I  am  no  Plutonomist,  no 


INTRODUCTION  xv 

Individualist,  no  stickler  for  rights  of  Property  and 
personal  freedom  from  State  interference.  If  a  Socialist 
is  one  who  looks  forward  to  a  reorganisation  of  society 
in  the  interest  of  the  masses — what  Comte  calls  "  the 
incorporation  of  the  proletariat  into  the  social  organism  " 
— one  who  fervently  desires  such  an  end  and  labours 
to  bring  it  about — then  I  am  so  far  a  Socialist.  If 
socialism  means  the  abolition  of  personal  appropriation 
of  capital  by  force  of  law,  then  I  look  on  such  a  dream 
as  the  era  of  social  chaos,  and  moral  and  material  ruin. 
If  this  seems  to  be  a  paradox,  I  hold  it  to  be 
reconciled  by  the  combination  of  Comte's  two  correla- 
tive laws. 

(1)  Wealth  is  the  product  of  society ',  and  must  be  devoted 

to  the  interest  of  the  social  whole. 

(2)  Moral  evils  can  be  cured  only  by  moral^  and  not  by 

material  agencies. 

This  book,  then,  must  be  taken  as  a  whole,  and  as  a 
continuation  of  my  previous  works  on  religion  and  on 
philosophy.  It  is  the  mature  and  systematic  belief  of 
one  who  has  taken  the  keenest  interest  in  the  political 
and  social  problems  of  the  last  fifty  years,  from  no 
party  or  sectarian  point  of  view,  but  with  profound 
conviction  in  a  general  philosophy  of  society  under  the 
inspiration  of  a  human  religion.  The  key  of  all 
national  and  social  problems  lies  in  a  human,  moral,  and 
scientific  Creed.  Their  solution  must  justify  the  truth 
of  that  philosophy  and  the  regenerating  power  of  that 
faith. 


xvi    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


PART   I 

The  book,  as  the  title  indicates,  is  divided  into  two 
sections,  distinct  although  in  mutual  reaction.  The 
first  Part  deals  with  international  problems,  war,  and 
imperialism.  It  inevitably  opens  with  a  criticism  of 
German  militarism  and  imperialism,  begun  more  than 
forty  years  ago  by  the  powerful  statesman  who,  in  two 
generations,  has  so  deeply  transformed  the  German 
people  and  so  potently  recast  the  politics  of  Europe. 
Modern  imperialism  and  the  militarising  of  nations 
dates  from  the  accession  of  Prince  Bismarck  to  power 
in  1 862  ;  and,  as  he  was  the  founder,  so  he  is  to  East 
and  West,  from  Japan  to  the  United  States,  the  great 
exemplar  of  imperial  expansion  and  the  nation  in  arms. 

That  is  the  key,  the  crux^  the  type  of  all  the  inmost 
problems  of  our  age.  All  serious  political  studies  must 
start  from  the  central  movement  of  all — German 
militarism — which  the  Kaiser  and  his  statesmen  regard 
as  a  precious  inheritance  from  the  mighty  founder  of 
their  Empire.  Prince  Btilow  said  in  the  Prussian  House 
of  Lords  in  a  most  memorable  speech  (February  26, 
1908) — "the  successors  of  Prince  Bismarck  owe  it  to 
the  great  Chancellor  to  continue  the  policy  which  they 
had  inherited  from  him."  There  is  the  centre  of 
European  disturbance. 

Thirty-eight  years  ago  I  warned  our  people  and 
ministers  that  the  Bismarckian  triumph  implied  an 
entire  recasting  of  international  relations,  and  an  era 
of  military  imperialism.  I  even  pointed  out  as  an 
inevitable  consequence  of  this,  the  Pan-German 
ambition  to  found  a  new  sea-power  and  to  dispute  with 
us  our  supremacy  at  sea.  I  do  not  pretend  to  discuss 
questions  of  fleets  and  of  armaments ;  and  I  join  in  no 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

scare  about  our  maritime  defences  or  in  promoting  the 
race  to  build  rival  Dreadnoughts.  But  I  hold  no  one  fit 
to  argue  any  political  problem  who  fails  to  see  that  the 
rulers  and  the  people  of  Germany  are  bent  on  being 
able  to  meet  Great  Britain  at  sea  on  equal  terms — not 
immediately,  but  within  a  decade  or  two  of  years  at 
most. 

This  is  an  inevitable  issue  for  German  ascendency  : 
from  the  point  of  view  of  German  patriotism,  a 
perfectly  legitimate  ambition.  But  the  case  of  our 
two  nations  is  not  parallel.  To  Germany,  with  a 
small  and  most  defensible  coast  but  no  colonies,  a  great 
fleet  is  a  costly '  luxury,  which  can  be  used  only  for 
offence.  To  Britain,  with  its  possessions  scattered 
over  the  globe,  its  food  and  prosperity  depending  on 
transmarine  trade,  a  mighty  fleet — even  a  predominant 
fleet — is  a  necessity  of  existence  as  a  nation  whilst  we 
hold  a  dispersed  Empire.  Our  unwieldy  Empire  is 
bound  up  with  our  naval  supremacy.  Ruin  that  and  you 
ruin  their  Empire  is  the  deep  conviction  of  German 
patriotism  :  and  a  very  natural  ambition  it  is. 

It  is  not  enough  to  be  assured  that  the  British  fleet 
is  equal  to  that  of  three  powers,  and  overmatches  that 
of  Germany  three  or  four  times  over.  To-day  that  is 
true.  But  ten  or  twenty  years  hence  things  will 
be  changed  indeed.  The  whole  German  fleet  is,  or 
may  be,  concentrated  in  one  of  the  most  defensible 
positions  in  Europe — the  mouth  of  the  Elbe  and  the 
south  coast  of  the  Baltic — if  not  the  mouths  of  the 
Rhine  and  the  Scheldt.  One-half — possibly  two-thirds 
— of  the  British  fleet  must  be  elsewhere  in  East  or 
West  when  there  is  prospect  of  a  great  war.  Who 
can  guarantee  that,  in  the  year  1920,  a  German  fleet, 
concentrated  in  the  Baltic  and  the  German  Ocean, 
and  possibly  with  an  ally,  may  not  be  able  to  overpower 
that  portion  of  the  British  fleet  which  can  be  safely 

* 


xviii  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

withdrawn  from  guarding  the  Empire  and  protecting 
our  supplies  of  food  ? 

To  work  for  that  grand  achievement  in  the  future 
is  the  inheritance  of  Bismarck  to  modern  Germany— 
to  modern  Europe.  Bismarckian  imperialism,  which 
his  successors  acknowledge  as  a  duty,  implies  the 
attempt.  Not  to-day — not  to-morrow — not  perhaps 
alone — and  certainly  not  whilst  Germany  is  isolated — 
isolated  as  a  result  of  Bismarckism — and  whilst  Britain 
is  rich  in  alliances  and  ententes.  But  alliances  come  and 
go  like  sunshine  and  storm-clouds.  And  our  children 
may  live  to  see  black  tempests  gathering  up  in  East 
and  West,  and  the  scattered  Empire  threatened  within 
and  without  from  many  sides  at  once.  Then  will  be 
the  hour  to  challenge  the  naval  supremacy  of  Britain. 

For  these  reasons,  the  key  of  international  problems 
lies  in  the  organisation,  the  power,  the  ambition  of 
German  imperialism.  And  a  serious  study  of  Euro- 
pean complications  must  start  from  that  which  I  treat 
in  the  first  essay — the  Bismarckism  which  is  what  it 
was  more  than  forty  years  ago — the  menace  and  the 
trouble  of  European  peace  and  progress  : — a  far  greater 
menace  to  the  very  existence  of  our  country  than  it 
was  when  Whig  statesmen  with  tranquillity  saw  France 
overwhelmed  in  1870. 

It  is  idle  to  repeat  to  us  that  neither  Germany  nor 
any  European  Power  has  the  least  idea  of  attacking 
our  country  —  now,  or  within  the  next  five  —  it 
may  be  the  next  ten  years.  Nor  could  Germany  or 
any  other  power  dream  of  success,  if  they  did.  But 
politics  are  not  a  matter  of  to-day,  nor  of  to-morrow 
— but  of  hereafter.  When  Kaiser  Wilhelm  started 
his  naval  programme  on  January  i,  1900,  he  said  : — 
"/  shall  reorganise  my  navy,  so  that  it  shall  stand  on  the 
same  level  as  my  army^  and  with  its  help  the  German 
Empire  shall  attain  to  a  place  which  it  has  not  yet, 


INTRODUCTION  xix 

reached"  When  those  words  were  spoken  the 
German  army  was  acknowledged  to  hold  a  supremacy 
in  Europe.  When  the  Kaiser's  very  natural,  wholly 
patriotic,  ambition  is  realised,  and  his  navy  has  the 
same  level  of  predominance  as  his  army,  the  very 
existence  of  the  British  Empire  will  await  his  signal 
to  break  it  up,  and  the  independence  of  Britain  will 
hang  on  the  resources  of  our  home  defence. 

Need  I  say  that  no  man  has  a  deeper  admiration 
for  the  intellectual  eminence  of  the  German  people, 
their  great  qualities,  and  their  splendid  achievements 
in  science,  in  art,  in  literature,  in  municipal  govern- 
ment— I  will  even  add  in  military  organisation  and 
training.  I  know  Germany  from  end  to  end.  I 
have  lived  in  Germany  for  long  spells  at  different 
periods.  I  have  watched  her  wonderful  growth  in 
many  visits,  from  1851  to  the  present  time.  I  have 
German  friends,  and  have  the  heartiest  sympathy  with 
all  that  is  noble,  intellectual,  sociable  in  the  German 
heart  and  the  homes  of  the  Fatherland.  By  educa- 
tion, by  sympathy,  by  personal  tastes,  I  am  a  strong 
pro-German  still.  But  I  cannot  shut  my  eyes  to  the 
inner  meaning  of  the  imperial  autocracy. 

With  the  efforts  of  the  day  to  secure  an  entente 
between  our  countries  I  can  heartily  join.  By  all 
means  let  us  encourage  good  feeling  between  the  two 
great  types  of  the  Teutonic  race.  Blood  is  thicker 
than  water  ;  and  every  Teuton  feels  the  kinship  in 
spite  of  political  differences  or  rivalries.  But  the 
exuberant  good-fellowship  of  journalists  and  savants 
is  a  passing  mood — an  artificial,  shallow,  and  on  one 
side  a  purely  official  movement.  It  has  nothing  to  do 
with  serious  politics,  with  international  policy,  with 
the  future  of  Britain  or  of  Europe.  Let  us  all  cheer 
the  genial  and  ubiquitous  Kaiser.  Let  us  embrace 
the  savant,  the  artist,  the  poet  of  the  Fatherland.  But 


xx     NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

let  us  keep  our  powder  dry — and  study  the  birth,  the 
growth,  and  the  future  of  Bismarckism. 

Do  I  by  this  encourage  any  imitation  of  militar- 
ism ;  am  I  justifying  imperialism  for  ourselves  ;  am  I 
playing  into  the  hands  of  the  Union  Jack  enthusiasts  ? 
Humanity  forbid  !  My  whole  purpose  is  to  point 
out  the  dangers,  the  evils,  the  tremendous  responsi- 
bilities with  which  the  Empire  burdens  our  people 
and  our  generation.  This  monstrous,  abnormal,  poly- 
glot, incoherent  Empire  is  our  white  man's  burden — 
our  statesmen's  dilemma,  our  cancer,  and  our  curse. 
In  the  last  essay  of  the  first  Part  I  explain  what  this 
means  ;  and  I  show  the  grounds  of  political  foresight, 
of  moral  principle,  of  religious  feeling,  wherein  this 
conviction  is  based. 

My  memory,  which  goes  back  over  the  whole  reign 
of  the  late  Queen,  forces  on  my  mind  the  momentous 
change  which  during  that  period  came  over  our  country. 
From  the  time  of  Waterloo,  and  for  a  generation  after 
it,  England  was  foremost  amongst  the  great  Powers  of 
Europe.  At  the  opening  of  the  twentieth  century 
England  was  swallowed  up  in  Empire.  From  being 
the  dominant  nation  in  the  State  system  of  Europe, 
it  was  translated  into  a  nondescript  World-Power. 
From  a  solid  impregnable  island,  it  had  become 
an  aggregate  of  unstable  and  disparate  fragments. 
England -plus -her -colonies  had  ceased  as  a  homo- 
geneous State.  We  are  now  an  Asiatic,  African, 
American,  Australasian  hybrid.  As  an  Englishman, 
I  view  with  shame  the  effacement  of  Old  England. 
As  a  patriot,  I  foresee  the  calamities  in  which  its 
inevitable  dissolution  may  involve  us.  As  a  reformer, 
I  deplore  the  wasted  opportunities,  the  protracted  mis- 
rule, the  social  chaos  it  inflicts. 

I  am  no  "little  Englander."  I  am  an  English- 
man of  the  English,  with  British,  Welch,  and  Irish 


INTRODUCTION  xxi 

ancestors.  And,  for  one,  I  am  intensely  proud  of 
England  with  its  thousand  years  of  glorious  traditions, 
down  from  the  incomparable  Alfred — the  England 
which  they  now  have  smothered  in  cosmopolitan 
dependencies.  I  belong  to  a  political  school  intensely 
patriotic,  for  on  the  walls  of  Newton  Hall  we  inscribed 
as  a  sacred  watchword  the  name  of  "  Country."  To 
those  who  taunt  us  with  "the  craven  fear  of  being 
great,"  we  retort  with  the  finger  of  scorn  at  the  low- 
bred pride  of  being  big. 

It  is  not  merely  the  sinking  of  heart  I  feel  when  I 
find  our  ancient  England  besmirched  into  a  mongrel 
Empire,  when  I  listen  to  the  blasphemous  swagger  of 
the  imperialism  of  the  canteen,  when  I  think  of  all 
the  waste  in  wealth,  force,  good  men,  engulfed  in 
precarious  adventures  over  the  globe  : — it  is  not  merely 
a  matter  of  degraded  feeling  and  demoralised  policy  that 
stirs  me.  It  is  the  bitter  conviction  that  this  parvenu 
Empire  is  doomed  to  early  dissolution — is  incapable  of 
being  made  permanent  or  stable — and  in  the  meantime 
is  turning  our  political  progress  backwards,  and  may 
possibly  lead  us  down  into  cruel  ruin. 

Nothing  can  ever  make  a  nation  out  of  a  congeries 
of  provinces,  with  every  skin,  creed,  and  type  of  man 
to  be  found  on  earth.  And  nothing  can  ever  make 
the  red  patches  tossed  over  the  map  of  the  planet  a 
coherent  State  or  even  a  colossal  Empire.  It  is  not  a 
colossal  Empire,  but  a  patchwork  bundle  of  conquests 
— not  even  strung  together  with  a  common  civil  and 
military  system,  but  detached  and  as  far  apart  as  North 
Pole  from  the  South  Pole,  as  Central  Africa  from  the 
Pacific. 

Common  sense  tells  us  that  units  so  heterogeneous 
and  isolated  can  be  held  only  by  a  nation  which  is 
"  mistress  of  the  seas  " — i.e.  by  a  people  whose  navy 
can  overpower  two  or  three  navies  combined.  For 


xxii   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  moment  that  is  the  case.  We  have  hitherto  had 
but  two  possible  rivals.  We  are  now  about  to  have 
two,  if  not  three,  more.  Is  the  British  navy  for  all 
time  prepared  to  meet  at  once  five  or  six  nations  at 
sea  ?  I  trow  not. 

It  is  true  that  at  present  there  is  no  danger  of  any 
such  combination,  nor  of  any  combination  that  Britain 
need  fear.  But  who  can  predict  the  possible  combina- 
tions of  the  next  twenty  years — even  of  ten  years  ? 
Now,  it  is  the  inevitable  effect  of  warlike  supremacy 
by  any  one  power  to  provoke  an  irrepressible  rivalry 
to  challenge  it.  Modern  civilisation  will  not  tolerate 
the  hegemony  of  any  one  Power.  All  the  jealousies, 
all  the  alarms,  all  the  evils  bred  by  the  modern  hege- 
mony of  the  new  Bismarckian  Empire  are  being  slowly 
but  inevitably  nursed  against  the  maritime  hegemony 
of  Britain.  It  is  childish  to  brag  about  overcoming 
this  rivalry  by  sheer  force  ;  as  if  we  could  go  on 
launching  fifty  Dreadnoughts^  and  could  indefinitely 
maintain  a  "three-power  standard,"  when  the  day 
comes  that  Germany  and  the  United  States,  if  not  the 
yellow  races,  and  the  Muscovite  races,  have  each 
developed  a  sea-power  equal  to  our  own  to-day. 

It  is  quite  true — and  I  have  just  argued  this  very 
point — that  supremacy  at  sea  is  necessary  to  our  actual 
safety  in  our  own  shores  at  home,  because  with  a 
home  army  of  but  100,000  regulars  at  most,  we  could 
not  sleep  in  peace  within  a  few  hours  of  the  continental 
millions  were  it  not  for  our  invincible  fleet.  But 
that  is  no  answer  to  our  rivals.  They  say,  "  We  have 
each  of  us  to  protect  our  own  countries,  and  you 
might  protect  yours  if  you  did  not  aim  at  being  the 
predominant  world-power.  And  we  will  tolerate  no 
longer  any  predominant  world-power." 

The  entire  balance  of  power — the  whole  European 
State  system — has  been  entirely  revolutionised  during 


INTRODUCTION  xxiii 

the  reign  of  the  late  Queen.  It  is  a  material,  intellec- 
tual, and  moral  change  that  has  come  over  our  kingdom. 
The  home  interests  of  England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland 
have  become  secondary.  Cosmopolitan  adventures, 
interests,  ideals,  have  become  primary.  Napoleon  III., 
Bismarck,  Disraeli,  founded  empires — of  which  one 
is  extinct  and  the  others  are  less  than  forty  years  old. 
Of  all  empires  on  earth,  or  even  recorded  in  history, 
the  British  Empire,  the  youngest  of  all,  is  the  most 
disjointed,  incoherent,  and  disparate  ever  devised  by 
man.  All  races,  every  skin,  religion,  manners,  language, 
climate,  ideal,  people  it — Negroes,  Hottentots,  Kaffirs, 
Arabs,  Malays,  Chinese,  Hindoos,  Greeks,  Italians, 
Spaniards,  Dutch,  French — with  their  own  languages, 
history,  and  law.  The  Court  of  Appeal  administers 
thirty -two  different  legal  systems  or  codes.  All 
religions  exist  in  it  from  Ultramontane  Catholicism  to 
the  worst  Negro-Fetichism — if  not  Devil-worship  and 
cannibalism,  or  human  sacrifices.  All  languages  are 
spoken  from  the  tongue  of  Shakespeare  to  the  gibbering 
of  Bushmen. 

Is  citizenship  possible  in  such  a  horde  ?  Is  patriot- 
ism conceivable  ?  Is  settled  government  practicable  ? 
Can  a  crowd  of  scattered  conquests  be  welded  into  a 
permanent  state  ?  Are  these  three  hundred  and  fifty 
millions  our  fellow-citizens  ?  Can  a  restless  and 
divided  democracy  look  to  hold  them  down  together 
for  ever  as  mere  alien  tributaries  ?  This  kingdom 
has  a  history  of  one  thousand  years — the  conquered 
dependencies  hardly  more  than  a  century.  On  how 
many  years  more  can  we  venture  to  count  ? — now 
that  dominion  has  been  substituted  for  citizenship — now 
that  in  place  of  a  loyal  union  of  free  citizens  we  have 
a  string  of  huge  provinces  held  to  tribute  by  armies 
shipped  out  and  back  in  relays  ? 

And  the  ballads  they  bawl  out  in  the  canteen  tell 


xxiv  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

us  how  "  big  "  it  is  !  Is  a  man  who  weighs  twenty-four 
stones  a  better  man  in  private  life  than  one  of  twelve  ? 
Is  Russia,  which  reaches  in  a  straight  line  for  some 
5000  miles,  a  match  for  an  island  of  500  miles  ?  Is  a 
man  whose  income  is  five  millions  a  year  as  happy  as 
one  who  lives  on  five  thousand  ?  Of  all  the  coarse 
crazes  of  this  age  of  "  bounders,"  the  pride  in  a  "  big  " 
Empire  is  the  worst  invention  of  our  cheap-jack 
literature.  When  Xerxes  led  his  millions  to  Salamis, 
when  Philip  II.  blessed  his  Armada,  when  Napoleon 
set  forth  to  Moscow,  their  empires  looked  mighty 
till  they  ended  in  ignominy  and  ruin. 

It  is  an  inheritance  of  evil  omen — a  damnosa 
hereditas — incapable  of  being  permanently  held  or  yet 
of  being  suddenly  quitted — rather  a  tremendous  task  to 
be  gradually,  fearlessly,  wisely  faced  and  reduced  in 
time.  To  go  on  blindly  increasing  it,  or  maintaining 
it  unchanged  and  unreformed,  is  the  road  to  national 
ruin.  Too  long  has  Empire  torn  away  our  thoughts 
from  all  the  evils  and  sufferings  we  have  at  home,  from 
sympathy  with  all  that  is  best  and  most  progressive  in 
our  European  neighbours,  from  ideals  of  a  civilisation 
of  peace  and  reform.  It  has  plunged  us  into  many  a 
miserable  war,  and  burdened  us  with  a  load  of  cruel 
and  needless  debt.  Imperial  pride  is  a  sordid  exchange 
for  national  patriotism.  The  imperial  ideal  is  the 
vulgarising  of  our  social  life,  the  stifling  of  our  national 
development,  and  the  distortion  of  our  political  energy. 
Whilst  we  are  pretending  to  Christianise  the  barbarous 
East  and  the  South,  we  are  leaving  moral  and  social 
barbarism  to  breed  at  home.  To  add  ever  new 
provinces  to  the  red  map  of  Empire  is  to  pile  fresh 
burdens  and  dangers  on  these  islands  of  our  forefathers. 
To  find  careers  for  a  hundred  thousand  well-born 
youths  is  to  close  our  ears  to  the  just  demands  of  the 
forty  millions  we  neglect.  . 


INTRODUCTION  xxv 


PART   II 

Just  as  the  tremendous  responsibilities  of  our 
amorphous  Empire  are  the  crux  of  our  National 
Problems,  so  the  upheaval  of  the  Industrial  order  is  the 
most  urgent  of  our  Social  Problems.  It  is  a  question 
wherein,  for  some  forty  years,  I  have  had  a  keen 
interest  and  have  taken  some  slight  part.  For  sixty 
years  at  least  the  claims  of  Labour  to  have  a  larger 
share  in  the  control  of  the  State  and  in  the  proceeds  of 
their  toil  have  been  continually  shaking  the  world  of 
politics  and  also  of  economics.  And  now  both  worlds 
are  confronted  with  the  far-reaching,  indeterminate, 
elusive  social  revolution  known  as  Socialism. 

With  the  deep  and  ever-growing  uprising  of  all 
civilised  workmen — and  indeed  of  all  men  of  clear 
thought  and  generous  feeling — against  the  injustice 
and  the  abominations  rife  in  our  industrial  system, 
I  have  been  through  life  in  complete  sympathy.  And 
in  the  attacks  upon  our  vicious  economic  world  I  find 
little  to  dispute — be  these  in  the  critical  side  of  books 
by  Henry  George,  Karl  Marx,  the  Fabians,  or  the 
Social  Democrats.  I  wholly  and  ardently  agree  with 
them  that  this  earth  will  not  be  a  home  worthy  of 
civilised  man  until  there  has  been  a  root-and-branch 
social  revolution  to  reform  the  daily  lot  of  the  vast 
working  majority  of  our  fellow-citizens. 

But  when  we  pass  to  their  reconstructive  schemes 
I  can  see  little  but  sophisms  and  passionate  dogmatism 
in  the  random  crudities  which  pass  as  Socialism.  These 
vague  Utopias  swallow  up  each  other  ;  and  if  applied 
in  practice  would  swallow  up  society  and  civilisation 
together. 

There  are  eight  main  grounds  whereon  the  shifting 


xxvi  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

phantasmagoria  called  Socialism   would   be   disastrous 
and  futile  : — 

(1)  Social  regeneration  could  only  be  sound  and  lasting 

if  it  took  account  of  all  the  sides  of  man's  social 
life — intellectual,  moral,  domestic,  artistic,  and 
religious. 

(2)  A    panacea   of    society    which    took    account   of 

nothing  but  Labour  could  be  nothing  but  a 
sordid  kind  of  materialism. 

(3)  Modern  Industry  could  not  be  maintained — much 

less  developed — without  rare  individual  genius 
and  no  less  rare  personal  energy. 

(4)  Such    special    genius    and    rare    energy  can    only 

be  secured  by  personal  freedom  and  the  un- 
trammelled initiative  of  gifted  individuals. 

(5)  To    suppose   that  industrial    genius    and   personal 

energy  can  be  hired  by  the  mass  of  the  manual 
labourers  is  an  ignorant  delusion. 

(6)  Democratic  government  is  at  best  a  poor  make- 

shift for  ruling  the  State;  to  apply  it  to  Industry 
could  end  in  nothing  but  material  ruin. 

(7)  The    personal  control  of  capital  is  not  only  the 

very  condition  indispensable  to  Literature, 
Art,  to  all  Improvement,  physical,  moral,  and 
aesthetic,  but  it  is  also  the  essential  field  of  some 
of  man's  noblest  and  most  generous  qualities. 

(8)  To  subject  industrial  life  as  a  whole  to  the  demo- 

cratic rule  of  the  manual  workers  would  be  a 
tyranny  which  would  crush  improvement,  art, 
thought,  and  freedom,  and  would  speedily  bring 
this  island  first  to  collapse,  then  to  starvation,  and 
ultimately  to  subjection  to  a  foreign  conqueror. 

(i)  In  the  essay  on  The  Limits  of  Political  Economy 
I  sought  to  expose  the  essential  narrowness  of  the 
orthodox  Plutonomy  in  fashion  in  the  'fifties  and  the 


INTRODUCTION  xxvii 

'sixties  by  showing  that  the  pretended  science  was 
usually  hypothetical  reasoning  from  quite  narrow  data. 
I  believe  the  essay  to  be  one  of  the  earliest  systematic 
attempts  to  shake  the  mischievous  fallacies  of  the 
orthodox  economists.  The  "  dismal  science  "  has  now 
lost  its  vogue  j  but  I  reissue  my  criticism  of  its  hollow 
dogmatism  because  most  of  the  argument  applies 
mutatis  mutandis  to  the  current  fallacies  of  Socialism. 
The  "orthodox"  economists  of  a  former  generation 
constructed  a  spurious  code  of  industrial  axioms  on  the 
cynical  assumption  that  all  men  acted  on  the  instiga- 
tion of  their  material  interests. 

The  Socialism  of  to-day,  however  much  its  advocates 
differ  in  method,  starts  with  a  similar  false  assumption, 
viz.  that  all  the  men  should  be  forced  to  live  in  the 
ways  their  neighbours  shall  direct  as  most  useful  to 
the  convenience  of  the  masses.  This  cognate  fallacy 
has  no  immoral  basis,  it  is  true.  It  even  exaggerates  an 
eminently  social  desire.  But,  as  it  rests  on  the  crude 
doctrine  of  material  democracy,  and  neglects  all  the 
nobler  sides  of  social  life,  it  would  result  in  paralysing 
society  and  in  the  end  bring  about  an  industrial  chaos. 

In  the  first  essay  of  Part  II.  I  have  analysed  the 
human  motives  and  ideals  of  life  which  Plutonomy 
neglected  as  useless  and  inoperative  in  social  life. 
Almost  every  word  of  that  argument  may  be  applied 
to  most  of  the  current  types  of  Socialism  which  have 
nothing  to  say  or  to  teach  about  all  the  nobler  and  purer 
forms  of  human  energy,  which  destine  society  to  the 
mechanical  task  of  working  up  raw  materials,  and 
satisfying  the  common  bodily  wants  of  mankind. 
Loose  generalities  which  some  Socialists  fling,  as  crumbs 
from  the  laden  tables  of  Labour,  to  Art,  Philosophy, 
Religion,  moral  and  scientific  Education — to  all  that 
makes  up  complex  civilisation — these  empty  phrases 
count  for  nothing  in  their  Utopias.  A  true  and 


xxviii  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

sincere  Socialism  must  reorganise  Society  from  top  to 
bottom  in  all  the  manifold  and  subtle  phases  of  man's 
Social  life,  as  ever  was  seen  in  the  varied  Past  or  as 
ever  is  imagined  in  the  Time  to  come. 

(2)  That  miners,  spinners,  and  masons  should  be 
fascinated  by  such  childish  sophisms  as  that  "  all  wealth 
is  produced  by  the  manual  workers"  ;  "that  the  entire 
product  of  Labour  should  be  handed  over  day  by  day 
to  the  labourers  "  ;  "  that  wealth  is  criminal  in  itself" — 
that  such  nonsense  should  be  listened  to  eagerly  by  men 
bowed  down  by  the  cruel  conditions  of  modern  toil, 
is  not  so  strange.     But  that  men  who  pretend  to  speak 
with  culture  of  mind  and  authority  to  teach  should 
preach  such  wild  stuff  is  a  sign  of  the  mental  chaos  of 
our  age  in  the  break-up  of  all  systematic  convictions. 

The  whole  of  the  second  Part,  and  especially  the 
essays  on  Co-operation^  on  Social  Remedies^  and  the 
last,  on  Moral  and  Religious  Socialism^  discuss  these 
fallacies.  Manual  Labour,  left  to  itself,  could  pro- 
duce nothing  ;  and,  but  for  scientific  leading  and  the 
resources  of  Capital,  would  only  waste  its  labour  and 
destroy  good  material.  If  the  whole  product  of  Labour 
were  paid  out  to  the  labourers  there  would  be  no 
accumulation,  no  capital  to  start  fresh  work,  and  soon 
no  means  of  working  at  all.  "  Wealth  "  is  no  more  a 
crime  than  Labour  ;  for  human  society  can  only  exist 
by  the  co-operation  of  both. 

(3)  The    crudest   of    the    fallacies    which    mislead 
unfortunate  toilers  for  wage  is  the  dream  that  great 
industries    could    be    managed    by    popular    elections, 
committees,  and  officials  chosen  by  the  votes  of  the 
mass.      A  great  factory,  a  railway,  a  bank,  could  no 
more  be  run  in  such  ways  than  Raphael's  Transfigura- 
tion could  be  produced  by  a  gang  of  house- painters, 
or  Hamlet  have  been  composed  by  the  printers  of  The 
Times.     All  industry  rests  on  individual  concentration, 


INTRODUCTION  xxix 

personal  genius,  stores  of  accumulation,  and  then  on 
masterly  rapidity  in  action.  Napoleon's  victories 
"were  won  by  half-an-hour."  Industrial  victories — 
even  industrial  success — are  likewise  the  prize  of 
rapidity,  secrecy,  inspiration,  command  of  large  reserved 
capital — and  above  all  of  freedom.  Battles  are  not 
won  by  councils  of  war — much  less  by  the  shouts  of 
whole  battalions  of  Tommy  Atkins. 

All  this  has  been  elaborately  worked  out  in  the 
essays  of  Part  II.  on  Co-operation  and  Social  Remedies^ 
and  need  not  be  discussed  any  further.  I  merely  now 
state  my  conviction  that  the  Marxian  scheme  of 
economic  revolution,  rigidly  enforced  in  Europe,  could 
result  in  nothing  but  such  desolation  as  fell  on  it  when 
the  Roman  Empire  was  broken  up  by  the  Northern 
tribes.  And,  if  enforced  in  our  own  country,  would 
end  in  a  few  months  in  general  starvation,  owing  to 
the  stoppage  of  our  foreign  food-supplies,  through 
the  destruction  of  credit,  of  mercantile  skill,  and 
of  efficient  management  of  the  material  necessities  of 
life. 

(4)-(8)  The  other  inevitable  results  of  real 
Socialism  are  discussed  in  the  second  Part  of  this 
book  ;  and  in  the  essays  on  Social  Remedies^  in  par- 
ticular, some  evidence  is  given  of  the  incalculable 
services  to  society  which  large  capitals  continually 
afford,  but  which  could  not  be  replaced  by  any 
administrative  or  democratic  machinery.  If  Demo- 
cracy ever  did  get  into  its  hands  the  collective  Capital 
of  the  community,  it  would  soon  prove  itself  to  be  the 
most  close-fisted,  cruel,  and  grasping  Capitalist  of  all. 

This  book  does  not  undertake  to  expound  in  detail 
the  social  reorganisation  which  it  would  substitute  for 
the  existing  economic  tyranny.  This  is  sketched  in 
the  leading  ideas  to  be  found  in  the  concluding  essay 
on  Moral  and  Religious  Socialism.  It  is,  in  fact,  the 


xxx     NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

subject  of  the  whole  of  the  volumes  of  which  this 
book  is  the  continuation,  as  it  is  indeed  the  real 
subject  of  almost  everything  I  have  written  since  I 
accepted  the  social  and  religious  scheme  of  regenera- 
tion that  the  nineteenth  century  owed  to  Augustt 
Comte.  We  also  are  Socialists — but  Socialists  with  a 
difference — that  whilst  working  for  an  entire  reorgan- 
isation of  industrial  life,  we  will  not  cease  to  work  for 
the  far  more  vital  reorganisation  of  moral,  intellectual, 
religious  life.  Without  this,  the  pretended  reorgan- 
isation of  industrial  life,  by  the  violent  confiscation  of 
personal  capital  (for  "  compensation "  is  an  idle  and 
mendacious  phrase — )  this  is  a  suicidal,  and  most  im- 
moral, delusion. 

There  will  be  found  here  no  attempt  to  discuss, 
what  are  so  often  mistaken  for  real  Socialism,  the 
current  schemes  for  the  State  acquisition  of  railways, 
of  mines,  of  ports  and  docks,  of  large  tracts  of  land, 
or  of  banks  ;  for  the  State  control  of  all  academies  and 
schools  ;  for  the  feeding  of  school  pupils  ;  for  old  age 
pensions  ;  for  the  support  of  the  poor  and  helpless  ; 
for  an  Eight-hour  Day — or  a  Seven-hour  Day  ;  for 
a  minimum  wage  ;  for  a  revision  of  the  Suffrage  ;  for 
a  reduction  of  armaments  ;  or  for  the  reorganisation 
of  local  government ;  and  generally  of  the  whole 
parliamentary  and  imperial  system. 

It  is  a  mistake  to  call  these  schemes  Socialism. 
Many  of  them  are  now  begun  or  advocated  by 
reformers  of  all  schools.  The  present  writer  would 
be  heartily  in  favour  of  gradually  introducing  any  or 
all  of  them  with  due  consideration  of  the  practical 
advantage  of  each  scheme  in  its  detailed  form.  Each 
proposal  has  to  be  considered  by  practical  statesmen 
on  its  merits  and  on  its  proven  efficiency.  It  would 
be  a  mischievous  dogmatism  to  resist  them  as  mere 
Socialism  ;  as  it  is  a  fallacy  to  regard  them  as  real  and 


INTRODUCTION  xxxi 

effective  Socialism.  The  Socialism  which  was  brought 
over  here  from  France  and  Germany,  which  was 
propounded  by  Proudhon,  Lassalle,  and  Marx,  is  a 
very  different  thing.  It  is  a  form  of  Communism, 
essentially  based  on  the  annihilation  of  personal 
ownership  of  Capital  in  any  form — the  annihilation 
in  the  early  future  of  the  Family,  and  ultimately 
of  Civilisation — because  it  applies  a  rigid  and  domi- 
nant democracy  to  material  life  alone,  blind  to  all  life, 
domestic,  moral,  intellectual,  and  religious. 

To  that  we  oppose  a  Socialism,  economic,  moral, 
and  religious,  whereby  the  reorganisation  of  Society 
as  a  whole  will  be  secured  by  a  new  ethical  and 
religious  education,  entirely  reforming  the  spirit  in 
which  Capital,  the  product  of  society,  shall  be  used, 
enjoyed,  and  controlled  for  the  good  of  Society  alone. 


PART   I 
NATIONAL    PROBLEMS 


I 

BISMARCKISM  :   THE  POLICY  OF 
BLOOD  AND  IRON 

(November  15,  1870) 

The  following  Essay  was  written  during  the  great  Franco- 
German  War  in  the  middle  of  November  1870, 
after  the  surrender  of  Metz  and  the  armies  of  Napoleon 
III.  and  of  Bazaine.  Trochu,  with  400,000  men  in 
arms,  was  still  holding  out  in  Paris,  and  the  Republican 
Government  was  still  at  Tours  with  several  armies  in 
the  field.  At  that  time  English  sympathy,  at  least  in 
the  Army,  in  the  Conservative  press,  and  in  the  working 
classes,  was  being  turned  in  favour  of  the  French  defence. 
The  writer,  who  had  been  strongly  opposed  to  Napoleon's 
mad  invasion  of  German  territory,  was  full  of  indignation 
at  the  mode  in  which  the  war  was  being  carried  on  by 
Bismarck.  He  had  been  on  the  Continent  and  through 
Germany  during  August,  September,  and  October.  And 
he  foresaw  the  consequences  to  England  and  to  Europe 
of  submitting  to  Prussia  becoming  the  dominant  power  on 
the  Continent.  The  Essay  must  be  read  as  the  passionate 
protest  of  one  who  was  then  labouring  to  rouse  English 
opinion  to  give  some  assistance  to  France.  It  is  reprinted 
without  modification  as  it  stood  in  the  Fortnightly 
Review,  December  1870,  vol.  viii.^  then  conducted  by 
Mr.  John  Morley.  The  writer  reproduces  it  because 
it  is  as  true  in  essential  principle  as  it  was  at  the  time, 


4   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

because  the  evils  then  evident,  and  the  consequences  then 
foreseen,  are  again  in  some  degree  imminent  to-day.  The 
writer  never  was  a  doctrinaire  "pacificist"  as  it  is 
the  fashion  to  call  those  who  deprecate  the  huge  war 
preparations  of  our  age.  But  he  has  ever  been  a 
convinced  opponent  of  Militarism.  With  all  his  admira- 
tion for  the  genius  and  energy  of  the  German  people,  he 
still  believes  that  the  real  cause  of  the  unrest  of  Europe 
is  to  be  found  in  the  system  of  ascendancy  by  armaments, 
founded  by  Bismarck  and  continued  by  his  successors 
(1908}. 

9 

"  It  is  desirable  and  necessary  to  improve  the  social  and 
political  condition  of  Germany  ;  this,  however,  cannot  be 
brought  about  by  resolutions  and  votes  of  majorities,  or 
speeches  of  individuals,  but  '  BY  BLOOD  AND  IRON.'  " — 
COUNT  BISMARCK. 

TREMENDOUS  as  is  the  drama  which  we  have  been 
watching  breathless  in  Europe,  we  have  seen  as  yet 
but  its  opening  scenes.  The  crash  of  the  most 
gigantic  battles  known  to  history  has  deafened  our 
senses  to  the  political  movement.  We  have  been 
brought,  as  it  were,  in  the  flesh,  close  to  these 
onslaughts  of  two  nations.  We  have  almost  heard 
with  our  ears  the  cries  of  triumph  and  despair.  We 
have  almost  seen  with  our  eyes  the  grappling  of  the 
combatants.  We  hold  our  breath  in  the  crisis,  feeling 
passionately,  some  with  one,  some  with  the  other, 
fighter — as  if  we  were  watching  gladiators  in  an  arena. 
It  would  be  well  to  look  at  it  more  as  politicians, 
and  less  as  spectators.  This  great  struggle  concerns 
the  welfare  of  Europe  and  of  England  ;  it  is  our  own 
future  and  peace  that  are  at  stake.  Let  us  consider 
what  may  be  the  consequences  to  civilisation,  and  not 
regard  it  merely  as  a  grand  study  of  national  character 
or  some  stupendous  experiment  in  modern  science. 


BISMARCKISM  5 

It  is,  after  all,  not  entirely  a  matter  of  sympathy  with 
this  or  that  type  of  race.  Nor  does  it  turn  altogether 
on  this  or  that  quality  or  institution  in  one  people  or 
the  other.  Our  mere  sympathies  have  their  place  ; 
but  it  is  high  time  to  face  the  political  issues  fore- 
shadowed. And  whilst  the  crowd  of  the  amphitheatre, 
ever  siding  with  force  and  success,  turn  down  their 
thumbs,  and  cry  "  Habet !  Habet !  "  let  us  'ask,  What 
may  this  contest  be  preparing  for  Europe  ? 

It  is  pitiful  to  hear  the  grounds  on  which  the 
issues  at  stake  are  so  often  decided.  An  anecdote 
about  a  landwehrman,  or  the  tone  of  a  proclamation, 
seems  to  some  people  sufficient  to  determine  the  right 
and  wrong  in  the  greatest  of  modern  struggles. 
Frenchmen  have  given  utterance  to  much  unwarrant- 
able language  about  the  "sacredness  of  French  soil," 
"  Paris  the  city  of  the  world "  j  the  peculiar  and 
special  sanctity  of  a  republic,  and  the  enormity  of 
assaulting  the  Capital.  Count  Bismarck  never  said 
a  truer  word  than  this,  that  the  honour  of  France  is 
of  precisely  the  same  quality  as  the  honour  of  other 
nations.  To  besiege  Paris  is  what  it  would  be  to 
besiege  Berlin,  if  it  were  fortified.  To  bombard  Paris 
is  no  greater  outrage  than  it  would  be  to  bombard 
London.  The  laws  of  war  certainly  do  give  the  right 
to  shell  a  fortified  city.  And  the  annexation  of  two 
provinces  is  not  to  be  counted  as  a  crime  merely  since 
it  is  done  at  the  expense  of  a  republic. 

Nor  is  the  nonsense  wanting  on  the  other  side. 
The  familiar  picture  of  the  German  soldier,  with  the 
inevitable  three  children  at  home,  writing  letters  to 
his  wife  between  the  pauses  of  each  battle,  and 
studying  his  pocket  copy  of  'the  Vedas  on  the 
outposts,  is  striking ;  but  it  is  not  decisive  on  a 
question  of  boundaries.  Pious  ejaculations  to  extirpate 
the  immorality  of  France  sound  strangely  from  men 


6   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

reeking  from  the  gambling  hells  of  Baden  and 
Homburg,  and  the  stews  of  Hamburg,  Berlin,  and 
Vienna.  The  fact  that  the  educated  classes  are 
serving  in  the  German  ranks  is  not  incompatible 
with  the  opinion  that  the  nation  is  disordered  with 
military  ambition.  The  German  troops  may  be 
learned  in  every  modern  and  ancient  tongue.  Does 
that  lessen  the  danger  of  a  vast  military  empire  ? 
The  German  armies  may  be  the  "nation  in  arms." 
But  have  invaders  in  any  age — did  Tilly  or  Attila  him- 
self strip  a  people  more  utterly  to  the  bone  than  they 
have  stripped  the  east  of  France  ?  These  fathers  of 
families  and  model  husbands  can  burn  down  villages  on 
system,  set  fire  to  farmhouses  with  petroleum,  massacre 
civilians  in  cold  blood  by  superior  order,  and  use  sub- 
stantial citizens  as  buffers  on  their  railway  trains. 

There  is  so  much  of  the  overgrown  schoolboy 
in  the  English  world,  that  great  political  movements 
are  judged  by  the  childish  rules  of  the  playground. 
People  need  to  be  reminded  that  there  is  something 
in  politics  more  profound  than  the  motto  of  a  "  fair 
field  and  no  favour."  "They  would  fight,  and  they 
must  fight  it  out,"  says  one.  "  The  weaker  is  beaten, 
and  must  pay  the  stakes,"  says  another.  "  France 
began  it,"  says  one.  "Germany  drove  her  to  it," 
says  another.  "The  French  are  a  nation  of  liars," 
cries  one.  "The  Germans  are  such  brutes,"  replies 
his  neighbour.  All  this  is  the  schoolboy  view  of 
the  war,  just  as  thousands  of  people  took  the  side 
of  slavery  in  the  American  civil  war,  because  they 
said  the  Yankees  bragged  and  the  Southerners  were 
descended  from  gentlemen. 

Now  what  we  want  is  a  political  view  of  this  war. 
A  question  like  this  is  not  a  law-suit,  nor  is  it  a  personal 
quarrel.  It  concerns  the  future  well-being  of  Europe. 
Speculations  into  the  real  origin  of  the  war  are  worse 


BISMARCKISM  7 

than  useless.  They  are  like  discussions  on  the  origin 
of  evil.  At  the  same  time  some  short  account  of  the 
basis,  as  it  were,  on  which  the  present  argument 
rests,  may  be  almost  indispensable. 

It  is  quite  plain  that  for  generations,  throughout 
the  political  and  literary  classes  of  France,  loud  and 
arrogant  voices  had  been  continually  raised  for  the 
frontier  of  the  Rhine.  There  is  no  proof  whatever 
that  these  disgraceful  appeals  could  ever  have  moved 
the  body  of  the  French  nation  to  an  aggressive 
war  for  its  possession.  But  the  aggrandisement  of 
Germany,  and  the  formation  of  a  vast  military  power 
by  her  side,  undoubtedly  filled  France  with  a  fever  of 
jealousy  and  fear.  The  jealousy  of  German  unity 
was  both  insolent  and  foolish,  and  deeply  disgraces 
the  French  name.  The  fear  of  the  German  military 
organisation,  if  hardly  worthy  of  a  great  nation,  was 
not  unnatural ;  and  if  we  look  at  the  professional 
cravings  of  the  German  chiefs,  quite  excusable. 
There  happened  to  France  what  would  happen  to 
England  if  France  by  a  war  of  aggrandisement  had 
seized  Belgium  and  Holland,  had  doubled  her  naval 
strength,  possessed  a  chain  of  great  arsenals  along 
the  northern  coasts,  and  had  acquired  a  fleet  of 
ironclads  in  the  Channel  far  superior  to  that  of 
England,  with  the  avowed  purpose  of  disputing  her 
maritime  supremacy.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that 
England  would  have  seized  the  first  opportunity  of 
bringing  the  struggle  to  an  issue  ;  and  every  second 
Englishman  would  have  been  saying,  "Better  to  fight 
it  out  at  once."  This  is  precisely  what  France  felt 
towards  Germany. 

But  although  the  professional  classes  in  both  nations 
were  equally  prepared  for  war,  in  both  they  were  kept 
in  restraint  by  the  good  sense  of  the  peaceable  mass  of 
the  people.  And  there  is  not  the  smallest  reason  to 


suppose  that  either  the  French  or  the  German  people 
would  deliberately  have  chosen  a  war  of  conquest.  It 
is  this  which  makes  the  war  peculiarly  the  crime  of 
Napoleon  and  his  civil  and  military  abettors.  Large 
classes  of  French  society  wantonly  supported  him,  and 
before  the  opinion  of  France  could  make  itself  heard, 
she  was  hurled  into  war.  The  French  people  as  a 
whole  had  no  voice  or  part  in  the  matter.  And  all 
the  efforts  of  the  prefets  could  not  wring  a  show  of 
assent.  It  is  utterly  untrue  that  either  they  or  the 
citizens  of  Paris  advocated  war.  The  writer  saw  a 
letter  written  by  a  very  able  observer  from  Paris  (one 
who  is  now  at  his  place  on  the  ramparts)  during  those 
days  when  Pietri's  hirelings  were  shouting  through 
the  streets,  "  a  Berlin  !  "  "  Paris,"  wrote  he,  "  est 
morne  et  silencieux."  And  even  the  Government 
never  pretended  to  make,  and  never  dreamed  of 
making,  this  a  war  for  the  Rhine  frontier.  A 
victory,  the  shadow  of  a  success,  and  a  plausible 
ground  for  peace,  was  all  that  they  dreamt  of.  An 
atrocious  project  in  itself;  one  in  which  the  French 
people  suffered  itself  to  be  involved,  and  one  for  which 
the  French  people  have  paid  a  terrible  price. 

In  this  state  of  things  the  war  began,  and  no  one 
desired  more  earnestly  than  the  present  writer  that  the 
Germans  might  repel  the  iniquitous  invasion,  and 
destroy  the  military  power  and  prestige  of  the  Empire. 
No  one  rejoiced  more  than  he  did  over  the  crushing 
completeness  with  which  this  was  done.  The  gain  to 
civilisation  in  the  extinction  of  Napoleonism,  and  of 
the  wretched  impostor  in  whom  it  has  ended  for  ever, 
in  the  disgrace  which  has  covered  the  corrupt  army  he 
had  created,  is  almost  a  sufficient  compensation  to 
France  and  to  Europe  for  all  the  sufferings  of  this  war. 
It  is  therefore  with  no  blind  partiality  for  France  that 
this  question  is  here  discussed. 


BISMARCKISM  9 

But  the  matter  for  us  is  this — What  does  all  this 
portend  to  Europe  ?  It  is  of  little  use  to  weigh  out 
the  relative  measure  of  guilt  in  either  Government,  or 
the  degree  in  which  their  people  participated  in  it. 
The  German  leaders  have  passed  from  the  task  of 
defence  into  a  career  of  conquest.  They  have  now 
thrown  off  the  mask,  and  no  longer  contend  that  they 
are  continuing  the  national  defence.  They  no  longer 
even  pretend  that  they  are  fighting  for  territory. 
They  are  fighting  now  (November  15)  solely  for  the 
military  point  of  honour — the  taking  of  Paris.  As 
the  Times  correspondent  at  Versailles  told  us,  the  King 
would  grant  no  armistice  ;  for  every  Prussian  soldier 
had  but  one  fixed  idea — to  enter  Paris.  That  is  to 
say,  the  Germans  are  now  fighting  for  military  glory. 
It  is  for  this  they  are  desolating  France  and  distracting 
Europe. 

We  have  protested  so  fiercely  against  the  military 
ambition  of  France,  that  we  have  come  to  forget  there 
is  such  a  thing  as  military  ambition  outside  France  at 
all.  But  what  is  Prussia  ?  The  Prussian  monarchy 
is  the  creation  of  war.  Its  history,  its  traditions,  its 
ideal  are  simply  those  of  war.  It  is  the  sole  European 
kingdom  which  has  been  built  up,  province  by 
province,  on  the  battlefield,  cemented  stone  by  stone 
in  blood.  Its  kings  have  been  soldiers :  sometimes 
generals,  sometimes,  as  now,  drill-sergeants ;  but  ever 
soldiers.  The  whole  state  organisation  from  top  to 
bottom  is  military.  Its  people  are  a  drilled  nation  of 
soldiers  on  furlough  :  its  sovereign  is  simply  com- 
mander-in-chief ;  its  aristocracy  are  simply  officers  of 
the  staff;  its  capital  is  a  camp. 

Nowhere  in  Europe — not  even  in  Russia — has  the 
military  tradition  and  ideal  been  sustained  in  so  un- 
broken a  chain.  Prussia  Proper  has  been  the  only 
European  State  organised  on  a  military  basis  as  com- 


io   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

pletely  as  any  State  of  antiquity.  In  the  words  of  the 
Edinburgh  Review^  "  No  nation  since  the  Roman  has 
ever  devoted  itself  so  wholly  to  the  development  of  the 
military  side  of  the  national  life."  And  this  is  true. 
Let  it  be  distinctly  understood  that  this  is  said  of 
Prussia  only  in  its  political,  or  rather  its  international 
aspect.  The  writer  is  the  last  person  to  forget  the 
splendid  intellectual,  artistic,  and  moral  achievements 
of  Germany  ;  the  high  culture,  and  noble  qualities  of 
individual  Germans  ;  their  industry,  energy,  and  devo- 
tion to  education.  All  that  is  not  here  in  question. 
What  is  meant  is  that  in  her  international  relations 
Prussia  is  a  nation  resting  on  a  military  basis.  Prussia 
in  a  distorted  way  is  the  Rome  of  modern  Europe — a 
brave  and  energetic  race  giving  their  whole  national 
force  to  war,  and  steadily  conquering  their  neighbours 
step  by  step.  The  notion  of  the  Prussian  army  being 
simply  a  militia  of  citizens  fighting  for  self-defence  is 
an  idle  figment.  Let  one  test  suffice.  Prussia,  or 
rather  Prussianised  Germany,  has  suddenly  thrown 
into  the  field  at  least  800,000  men,  possibly  1,000,000. 
Grant  that  these  are  mostly  armed  citizens.  If 
there  is  one  thing  in  this  war  certain,  it  is  that  this 
vast  host,  the  largest  which  has  ever  been  gathered 
under  one  head  in  Europe,  has  been  led  by  highly 
trained  professional  officers,  equipped  with  an  adequate 
commissariat,  provided  with  gigantic  siege  and  train 
appliances,  aided  with  the  most  scientific  engineers, 
and  directed  by  the  most  accomplished  staff  that  has 
ever  taken  part  in  war.  Now  what  does  this  imply  ? 
It  is  this  —  that  highly  trained  leaders  for  800,000 
men  in  every  branch  of  the  scientific  uses  of  war  are 
not  the  creation  of  a  militia,  are  not  made  in  a  day, 
but  in  themselves  prove  a  devotion  of  the  national 
power  to  war  as  a  profession  far  greater  than  exists  in 
any  people  in  the  world — far  greater  than  ever  has 


BISMARCKISM  11 

been  regularly  organised  since  the  palmy  days  of  the 
Roman  Republic. 

We  hear  much  of  the  Chauvinism  of  the  French 
army  and  military  class.  No  language  can  be  too 
strong  for  it.  It  is  odious ;  and  France,  even  in 
passing  through  the  fire,  is  well  freed  from  the  curse 
of  France — its  own  army.  But  that  Chauvinism — 
the  mere  insolence  of  the  soldier — which  is  the  curse 
and  shame  of  France,  has  not  tainted  the  mass  of  the 
people.  The  French  peasant,  and  still  more,  the 
French  workman — that  is  to  say,  nineteen  out  of 
twenty  Frenchmen — look  on  the  soldier's  professional 
arrogance  with  loathing.  To  the  peasant  the  army 
represents  the  blood-tax,  to  the  workman  the  instru- 
ment of  the  tyrant.  And  thus  Chauvinism  in  France, 
with  all  its  shameful  attributes,  is  a  cancer  in  French 
society,  but  is  not  its  bone  and  sinew. 

We  never  hear  of  the  Chauvinism  of  Prussia. 
What  may  be  the  reason  ?  Perhaps  that  the  whole 
nation  is  so  penetrated  with  a  faith  in  military  qualities 
— Chauvinism,  in  fact — that  it  finds  no  distinct  type. 
In  Prussia  the  professional  soldier  makes  less  noise — 
not  because  the  professional  soldier  is  so  alien  to  the 
rest  of  society,  but  because  he  is  so  much  akin  to  it. 
Every  Prussian,  in  one  sense,  is  a  professional  soldier  ; 
and  as  a  matter  of  course  adopts  the  soldier's  creed, 
ideal,  and  morality.  No  one  can  doubt  that  the 
German  is  a  brave,  strong,  self-reliant,  acute,  and 
calm  man.  It  is  in  all  the  individual  virtues  a  grand 
and  large  type  of  human  nature.  The  German 
soldier  is  conspicuously,  and  even  nobly,  free  from 
gasconading.  He  very,  very  rarely  brags.  A  fine 
quality ;  but  there  are  others  necessary  to  a  social 
being.  And  a  man  may  disdain  to  boast,  be  brave 
and  self-possessed,  and  yet  be  overweeningly  proud  of 
his  brute  force,  and  determined  to  exert  his  force 


12   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

without — from  the  social  point  of  view — mercy, 
shame,  or  conscience.  And  such  a  man  is  the  pro- 
fessional Prussian  soldier. 

What,  for  the  last  generation,  has  been  the  history 
of  the  monarchy  of  Frederick  in  its  international 
relations  ?  Two  wars  of  conquest  against  Denmark  ; 
a  war  of  conquest  against  Southern  Germany  ;  bully- 
ing Switzerland ;  bullying  Holland ;  oppression  in 
Schleswig  ;  oppression  in  Posen  ;  oppression  in  Han- 
over, Saxony,  Frankfort,  Hamburg.  We  quite  forget 
that  that  history  of  the  destruction  of  the  old  German 
Confederation  is  a  perfect  tissue  of  violence  and  fraud. 
Spoliation  more  arrogant,  and  chicanery  more  shame- 
less, have  never  been  seen  in  Europe  in  modern  times. 
The  Prussian  deals  with  the  weak  in  Europe,  as 
Russia  deals  with  the  Turk,  as  Europeans  deal  with 
Asiatics,  but  as  no  other  people  in  Europe  deal  with  a 
Christian  neighbour.  In  Prussian  politics  alone  the 
very  germ  of  international  morality  is  wanting. 

Unhappily  this  gospel  of  the  sword  has  sunk  deeper 
into  the  entire  Prussian  people  than  any  other  in 
Europe.  The  social  system  being  that  of  an  army, 
and  each  citizen  drilled  man  by  man,  there  is  (out  of 
the  working  class)  no  sign  of  national  conscience  in 
this  matter.  And  the  servile  temper  begotten  by  this 
eternal  drill  inclines  a  whole  nation  to  repeat,  as  by 
word  of  command,  and  perhaps  to  believe,  the  con- 
venient sophisms  which  the  chiefs  of  its  staff  put  into 
their  mouths.  I  purposely  here  and  elsewhere  speak 
of  Prussia,  and  not  of  Germany  ;  for  it  is  Prussia 
alone  which  is  regularly  organised  on  a  military  basis. 

We  hear  much  of  the  Napoleonic  legend.  But 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  the  Hohenzollern  legend  ; 
and  one  of  the  sophisms  which  Germany  repeats  is 
the  worship,  as  of  a  great  modern  ruler,  of  a  king 
who,  even  in  his  own  eyes,  is  a  sort  of  imitation 


BISMARCKISM  13 

Czar.  One  of  the  most  laughable  of  these  sophisms 
is  the  notion  that  the  German  is  a  mild,  peaceable,  and 
stay-at-home  creature,  utterly  inoffensive,  and  never 
resorting  to  arms  except  in  urgent  self-defence. 
Really  the  "  mild  German "  reminds  one  of  the 
"mild  Hindoo."  It  is  entirely  forgotten  that  indi- 
vidual is  a  very  different  thing  from  national  character. 
And  the  quiet  or  jovial  Hans  of  his  own  firesids, 
under  a  complex  set  of  national  institutions,  becomes, 
as  the  unit  of  a  nation,  one  of  a  conquering  people. 
Nothing  can  get  over  these  facts :  that  the  history  of 
Prussia  consists  of  military  annals ;  that  the  present 
generation  of  Prussians  have  three  times  threatened, 
and  have  four  times  engaged  in,  a  foreign  war  ;  and 
that  scarcely  an  acre  of  the  broad  fields  of  Germany 
but  has  been  soaked  in  the  blood  of  one  or  other 
variety  of  the  "mild  German."  The  lanzknecht  is 
transformed ;  but  he  stalks  still  beneath  the  pickel- 
haube* 

Prussia,  and  even  Germany  under  the  Prussian 
drill,  is,  in  truth,  a  nation  far  more  military  than 
France.  French  opinion,  had  it  had  time  to  speak, 
would  have  held  back  Napoleon  from  his  iniquitous 
career.  But  the  Prussian  rank  and  file  (such  a  thing 
as  public  opinion  does  not  exist)  have  neither  the 
desire  nor  the  power,  as  we  saw  in  '66,  to  question 
the  commands  of  their  chiefs.  And  one  of  the  most 
ludicrous  examples  of  this  slavish  condition  of  things 
is  seen  in  the  way  in  which  the  entire  German  race 
re-echoes  the  language  of  its  mere  soldiers,  and  all  the 
time  that  it  wages  a  war  of  conquest,  continues  to 
repeat  the  formula,  "  we  are  the  most  peaceful  of 
men,"  as  if  it  were  Von  Moltke's  own  pass-word. 

There  is  ground  for  thinking  that  many  of  them 
actually  believe  it.  One  of  the  most  repulsive  features 
of  this  war  is  the  way  in  which  a  spirit  of  Pharisaism 


14  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

has  entered  into  the  very  soul  of  the  German.  Phari- 
saism— hypocrisy — cant  was  ever  the  Teutonic  vice. 
But  in  the  history  of  human  folly,  it  never  has  been 
carried  to  such  a  point  as  in  this  late  war.  A  nation 
crazed  with  revenge  and  ambition,  keeps  on  thanking 
God  for  his  mercy  by  platoons,  the  God  which  nine 
out  of  ten  of  their  educated  men  openly  or  secretly 
ignore.  A  people  who  burn  villages  wholesale,  and 
massacre  peasants  on  system,  swear  that  they  are  the 
most  inoffensive  of  men.  They  heap  on  France  every 
insult,  and  threaten  every  evil  which  hatred  can  invent, 
whilst  whining  through  Europe  that  they  are  only 
seeking  a  safer  line  of  frontier.  They  are  never  weary 
of  calling  Heaven  to  witness  the  immorality  of  France, 
whilst  themselves  waging  the  most  savage  of  all  modern 
wars,  with  inhuman  cruelty  and  relentless  hate.  They 
for  ever  cry  out  over  the  falseness  of  France,  whilst 
their  own  chosen  mouthpiece,  Bismarck,  is  perhaps  the 
most  accomplished  master  of  fraud  in  modern  times ; 
whilst  the  official  and  literary  utterances  of  the  country 
form  one  system  of  organised  falsehood  ;  and  the  whole 
people  gives  itself  up  to  mere  stereotyped  cant.1 

This  falsehood  on  one  side  or  the  other  is  no  true 
test  of  right  or  wrong  in  this  quarrel,  but  it  is  just  as 
well  to  clear  away  misconceptions.  No  language  can 
adequately  stamp  the  untruth  of  French  officialism  and 
journalism  through  this  war.  It  is  simply  repulsive. 
And  few  things  in  the  frenzy  of  France  have  been 
more  melancholy  than  the  proneness  to  utter  and  to 
adopt  fabrications.  It  is  a  sorry  task  to  trace  all  the 
ravings  of  a  distracted  people  in  the  hour  of  their  death- 
struggle.  But  the  falsehood  of  Germans  throughout 
the  war,  if  less  wild,  has  been  more  systematic.  German 
officials  conceal  the  truth  with  at  least  as  much  skill  as 

1  We  now  know  the  whole  story  from  the  cynical  Memoirs  of  Prince 
Bismarck  and  the  other  official  revelations  (January  1908). 


BISMARCKISM  15 

French  distort  it.  In  fraud,  Bismarck  has  found  no 
French  match  or  even  rival.  One  impudent  cry 
succeeds  another.  Now  it  is  to  save  their  Holstein, 
now  their  Alsatian  brothers ;  now  it  is  the  rescuing 
France  from  her  corrupt  rulers,  purging  Europe  from 
French  immorality,  putting  down  military  ambition, 
denouncing  English  partiality  ;  now  it  is  the  guaran- 
teeing their  own  frontier.  One  after  another  these 
shameless  pretexts  are  taken  up  by  word  of  command  j 
and  throughout  Germany  they  are  repeated  by  man, 
woman,  and  child  with  ridiculous  monotony.  French 
generals,  and  officials,  and  journals  lie  ;  but  the  French 
nation  has  not  given  itself  up  to  organised  cant  at  the 
bidding  of  its  officers. 

I  have  spoken  plainly  my  opinion  about  German 
cruelty.  I  say  it  most  deliberately  that  Germans  are 
now  carrying  on  war  with  inhuman  cruelty.  War  so 
savage,  torture  so  steadily  inflicted  on  a  civil  com- 
munity, has  never  been  seen  within  two  generations 
in  Europe — save  once.  That  once  was  the  Russian 
war  of  extermination  in  Poland.  It  rests  on  the 
German  race,  with  their  pretended  culture,  to  have 
carried  into  the  heart  of  Western  Europe  the  horrible 
traditions  of  Eastern  barbarism.  I  do  not  intend  to 
argue  any  isolated  case.  Bazeilles,  Strasburg,  Ablis, 
may  perchance  all  have  been  burnt  by  the  strictest  of 
military  codes.  I  do  not  charge  the  German  leaders 
with  having  (exceptions  excepted)  exceeded  in  acts  of 
blood  what  are  called  the  laws  of  war.  I  do  not  deny 
that  many  of  them  may  be  proved  to  be  what  are 
called  military  necessities.  Still  less  do  I  charge 
Germans  individually  with  any  love  of  cruelty  as 
such.  But,  like  all  people  of  Teutonic  race,  the 
Germans,  though  they  do  not  love  cruelty,  are  per- 
fectly capable  of  it  to  meet  their  ends  ;  and  indeed 
take  to  it  with  a  calm  inward  satisfaction,  and  a 


16   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

business-like  completeness,  which  is  more  horrible 
even  than  the  excesses  of  passion. 

What  has  come  over  the  English  mind  that  it 
acquiesces  so  calmly  in  the  sanguinary  acts  of  this 
war  ?  The  Germans  have  not  exactly  pillaged. 
"The  wise  'require'  it  call."  But  they  have 
stripped  one -third  of  France  utterly  to  the  bone. 
The  ransacking  the  villager's  home,  seizing  his  cattle, 
and  "requiring"  his  daily  bread  and  the  seed  of  his 
land,  may  be  strictly  according  to  the  rules  of  war  j 
but  it  is  still  inhuman  cruelty.  It  deliberately 
reduces  him  to  starvation.  The  bombarding  the 
civil  portion  of  cities  may  be  a  right  of  war, 
but  it  is  still  inhuman  cruelty.  The  burning  of 
towns  and  villages  wholesale — twenty  we  were  glibly 
told  of  in  one  telegram  from  Berlin — may  be  a  mili- 
tary necessity,  but  it  is  inhuman  cruelty.  Plundering 
citizens  by  threat  of  instant  death,  the  placing  them 
on  the  engines,  the  massacre  in  cold  blood  of  irregular 
troops,  and  still  more  of  villagers  suspected  of  aiding 
them,  may  be  a  mere  measure  of  self-defence  ;  but  I 
call  it  inhuman  cruelty.  It  is  the  murder  of  non- 
combatants  or  prisoners — and  therefore  terrorism. 

Why  tell  us  that  Napoleon  did  it  ?  Napoleon  was 
a  monster  ;  and  generations  have  passed  since  that  day. 
To  murder  and  burn  alive  civil  populations — men, 
women,  and  children — to  burn  down  whole  districts, 
to  massacre  prisoners  in  cold  blood,  and  to  starve  a 
civil  population,  may  be  war  ;  but  it  is  not  the  less 
inhuman.  The  fact  remains — laws  of  war  or  not — 
that  no  nation  has  ventured  on  this  bloody  path  in 
Europe  for  generations,  except,  as  said  before,  the 
Russians  in  Poland.  Military  necessity  forsooth  ! 
So  said  the  Russians ;  so  says  every  invader  in  a 
war  of  extermination.  But  what  necessity  compels 
the  Germans  still  to  carry  on  a  war  that  must  be  so 


BISMARCKISM  17 

carried  on  at  all  ?  What  compels  them,  with  France 
prostrate  before  them,  still  to  continue  this  horrible 
course  ?  Nothing  but  their  own  lust  for  conquest 
and  glory.  Not  all  the  glozing  of  their  truculent 
hypocrites  —  professors  or  journalists  —  who  exhort 
them  to  these  outrages  as  to  acts  of  duty,  can  cloak 
this  under  the  plea  of  self-protection.  Deliberately, 
with  a  lie  on  their  lips,  they  choose  to  continue  a 
war  of  annihilation  ;  a  war  in  which  every  step  is  but 
a  step  into  a  deeper  sea  of  blood  and  horror.  Military 
necessity  was  ever  the  plea  of  pitiless  ambition.  If  all 
this  blood  and  horror,  over  and  above  all  modern  wars, 
is  a  military  necessity  of  this  war — then,  in  the  name 
of  civilisation,  it  is  a  social  necessity  to  stop  this  war. 
The  fact  remains  that,  in  mere  pursuit  now  of  military 
glory,  the  Germans  are  carrying  on  war  as  no  foreign 
war  in  Europe  has  in  this  age  been  carried  on,  as  it  is 
an  outrage  to  humanity  to  carry  on  war  at  all.  On 
them,  and  on  their  children,  will  remain  the  curse  of 
reviving  in  modern  Europe  the  most  bloody  and  bar- 
barous traditions  of  the  past — the  wholesale  wasting  of 
an  enemy's  country,  and  the  systematic  massacre  of 
civilians.1 

Of  all  the  horrible  evils  of  this  war,  none  perhaps 
is  more  sinister  than  this :  the  debauchery  of  public 
opinion  by  the  taint  of  blood,  the  sinking  back  of 
European  morality  to  the  worst  of  the  old  level. 
Wars  there  have  been  in  Europe,  bloody  and  horrible 
enough,  but  for  generations  now  they  have  been  wars 
between  regular  armies.  We  had  hoped  and  believed 
that  what  wars  there  were  to  be,  were  to  be  fought 
out  as  duels  between  set  forces,  and  not  waged  like 
the  wars  of  extermination  of  two  Indian  tribes.  This 

1  Alas  !  in  the  last  thirty-five  years  we  have  often  seen  this  barbarous 
example  followed — though  not  in  Europe.  The  curse  of  Bismarclcism  is 
that  it  has  torn  up  the  old  Law  of  Nations  (1908). 

C 


1 8   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

hope  has  been  crushed  by  Germany  ;  and  we  have 
seen  a  war,  not  only  the  most  gigantic  in  history,  but 
one  marked  with  almost  every  phase  of  antique  bar- 
barity— the  wholesale  massacre  of  non-combatants,  the 
pillaging  of  civil  property  on  system,  the  tyranny  of  a 
hateful  conquest,  the  ferocity  of  martial  law.  And  we 
listen  to  it  all  calmly  ;  and  feel  reassured  to  know  that 
it  is  all  done  strictly  according  to  the  books.  Desola- 
tion and  murder,  sown  broadcast,  come  upon  us  natu- 
rally enough,  if  nothing  be  done  but  what  has  the 
sanction  of  Tilly,  or  Marlborough,  or  Napoleon. 

It  is  small  plea  to  tell  us  that  France  would  have 
done  the  same  to  Germany.  If  so,  then  on  her  would 
have  lighted  the  curse.  But  as  Germany  has  done  it, 
on  her  it  rests.  When  Russia  in  annihilating  Poland 
told  us  that  the  fury  of  the  Poles  was  such  that  it 
could  not  be  broken  down  unless  by  these  horrible 
extremities — what  was  the  answer  of  Europe  ?  Europe 
answered  to  her  : — by  what  compulsion  must  you  break 
down  Poland  ?  And  so  hereafter  will  rest  on  Germany 
the  ban  of  civilised  Europe. 

The  continuance  of  this  horrible  conflict  is  fast 
inuring  us  to  the  vile  code  of  blood.  For  months  the 
journals  have  filled  our  minds  with  the  loathsome  cant 
of  the  camp.  Bloody  battles  are  sketched  off  for  us 
daily  with  a  jaunty  gusto  which  is  sickening.  Women 
and  children  are  well  tutored  in  all  the  hideous  slang 
of  the  trooper  ;  they  read  of  "  beautiful  "  charges,  and 
"  superb  "  shell-practice,  and  of  "  lively  "  fusillades. 
Not  a  brutality  of  the  man-at-arms  is  spared  us. 
The  ghastly  delights  of  the  battlefield,  the  dreadful 
indifference  to  life,  the  foul  professional  jargon  are 
served  up  to  us  with  much  patchwork  word-painting, 
and  much  artificial  joviality.  This  ape-like  glee  in 
mimicking  the  tone  of  war  is  degrading  the  moral  sense. 
And  the  most  horrible  of  human  passions — the  love 


B1SMARCKISM  19 

of  destruction  in  its  most  settled  and  professional  form 
— is  nursed,  and  adorned,  and  stimulated,  until  it  is 
growing  to  form  a  sort  of  standard  of  opinion. 

It  seems  necessary  now  again  to  repeat  old  truisms 
— that  the  slaughter  of  mankind  is  horrible  in  itself, 
that  the  trade  of  slaughtering  mankind  is  a  horrible 
one,  that  the  morality  of  the  slaughterer  of  mankind 
is  necessarily  a  low  one.  For  two  generations  the 
military  type  of  life  had  been  sinking  into  just  odium. 
But  now,  forsooth,  war  is  to  be  rehabilitated.  The 
military  becomes  the  normal  form  of  life.  Our  civil 
life  is  to  be  recast.  Every  citizen  is  to  be  a  soldier. 
Every  civilian  talks  of  guns,  and  shells,  and  formations, 
and  apes  the  jargon  of  the  lowest  form  of  righting 
animal.  Moltke  and  Bismarck  are  the  great  men  of 
our  age.  Prussia  is  our  model  state  of  an  armed  and 
drilled  nation.  The  one  great  public  question  is  the 
recasting  of  our  military  system.  Our  amusement  is 
to  chatter  over  the  incidents  of  these  vast  butcheries. 
Our  literature  is  the  picturesque  recounting  of  the 
battle  or  the  siege.  And  thus  we  are  falling  back  in 
public  morality  a  century.  The  military  becomes  the 
true  type  of  human  society  ;  some  pitiless  strategist  is 
a  hero  ;  some  unscrupulous  conspirator  is  a  statesman  ; 
and  the  nation  which  is  the  best  drilled  and  the  best 
armed  in  Europe  is  to  go  to  the  van  of  modern  civil- 
isation. Brutalising  and  senseless  creed  !  And  this 
we  owe  to  Prussia.1 

It  is  this  evil  which  is  the  most  to  be  dreaded  for 
the  future — the  destruction  of  international  morality 
in  Europe,  and  the  restoration  of  the  old  military 
standard.  To  substitute  Bismarckism  for  Napoleon- 
ism  would  be  a  very  small  gain  to  civilisation.  And 
the  Prussian  army  is  vaster,  more  anti-popular,  more 

1  And  I  have  lived  to  see  all  this  forecast  too  truly  verified — and  by 
our  own  countrymen  in  Asia  and  in  Africa  (1908). 


20   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

thoroughly  professional  and  retrograde  in  its  tone  even 
than  the  French.  The  French  military  regime — 
Napoleonism  itself — always  rested  on  a  revolutionary 
basis,  and  existed  in  a  revolutionary  medium.  It  was 
always  felt  that  an  upheaving  of  the  people  could 
shake  it  to  its  foundations,  and  it  was  obliged  to 
respect  and  sometimes  to  adopt  popular  principles. 
But  the  Prussian  army  rests  on  a  feudal  and  mon- 
archic basis  exclusively.  Patriotism  in  Prussia  means 
obedience  to  the  commander-in-chief.  The  ranks  of 
society  mean  grades  in  the  army.  Thorough  dis- 
cipline reigns  throughout  it.  And  this,  however 
valuable  in  a  military  point  of  view,  in  the  political 
implies  the  stagnation  of  all  civil  life.  Thus  the 
Prussian  army  (and  for  all  international  purposes  the 
Prussian  army  is  the  Prussian  government)  represents 
the  most  retrograde  spirit  in  modern  society,  and  is 
the  natural  foe  of  every  element  of  progress.  What 
are  we  to  gain,  therefore,  by  substituting  the  Prussian 
for  the  Napoleonic  regime  in  Europe  ? 

We  are  told  to  trust  to  Germany  at  the  close  of 
her  victory  assuming  a  liberal  form.  What  are  the 
grounds  for  any  such  hope  ?  Bismarck  may  promise 
to  "crown  the  edifice,"  as  Napoleon  did  every  Spring, 
and  with  as  great  result.  We  have  seen  the  Prussian 
government  engaging  in  one  war  of  conquest  after 
another  ;  but  we  never  heard  that  the  people  could 
exert  the  smallest  influence  on  its  government.  Why 
will  they  do  so  when  Bismarck  and  Moltke  have 
riveted  the  chains  of  Germany  —  for  it  is  for 
Germany,  not  France,  that  they  are  forging  chains  ? 
What  single  political  principle  in  Europe  is  due  to 
Prussia  ?  Politically,  Prussia  is  a  camp,  and  the 
Prussian  is  a  conscript.  With  all  the  wonderful 
intelligence,  industry,  culture,  and  energy,  for  which 
individual  Prussians  cannot  be  too  highly  rated,  the 


BISMARCKISM  21 

nation,  as  a  political  whole,  has  been  ground  down  by 
drill  and  bureaucracy,  of  which  their  very  state  educa- 
tion is  a  part,  to  political  nonentity.  There  is  more 
true  public  life  in  Russia  itself.  I  do  not  forget  the 
strong  language  used  by  deputies  and  journalists. 
But  neither  exert  the  smallest  influence  over  the 
action  of  the  Monarchy  and  its  Bureaucracy. 

Now  the  elevation  of  a  spirit  like  this  (a  spirit  the 
better  side  of  which  is  seen  in  the  antiquated  pride  of 
the  old  martinet-king,  and  its  worst  in  the  "  blood 
and  iron "  of  his  crafty  minister)  must  tell  on  the 
public  opinion  of  Europe.  Let  us  suppose  that 
Germany  returns,  having  added  to  her  frontiers 
Lorraine  and  Alsace,  in  the  whole  of  her  vast 
strength,  and  with  the  immense  prestige  of  her 
unparalleled  successes.  The  position  of  France, 
Germany  holding  Metz  and  Strasburg,  is  simply  that 
of  Piedmont  whilst  Austria  held  the  Quadrilateral. 
Germany  would  hold  an  armed  hand  pointed  at  the 
heart  of  France.  With  her  capital  and  her  richest 
provinces  almost  under  the  guns  of  these  great 
fortresses,  France  would  be  in  every  question  at  the 
mercy  of  her  great  neighbour.  She  must  be  the 
centre  of  a  restless  agitation,  looking  for  allies  every- 
where, and  seeking  her  opportunity  anywhere.  We 
well  remember  what  it  was  for  European  peace  to 
have  had  an  Italian  and  a  Polish  question — what 
would  it  be  to  have  a  French  question,  France  suffer- 
ing a  standing  humiliation  and  danger  ?  Europe 
would  not  enjoy  a  day  of  repose  or  peace. 

There  are  those  who  look  to  see  Prussia  actually 
dominating  Europe  in  arms.  We  need  look  for  no 
such  danger.  Undoubtedly  there  are  the  germs  of 
many  a  sinister  combination.  Denmark,  no  doubt, 
will  fall  one  day  a  prey  to  her  old  despoiler.  A 
struggle  for  the  German  subjects  of  Austria  is  inevit- 


22  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

able.  Holland  and  Belgium  both  have  reason  to  fear. 
Russia,  in  spite  of  dynastic  sympathies,  must  be  the 
enemy  of  aggrandised  Prussia.  Prussia  already  coquets 
with  the  Pope  and  threatens  Italy,  no  doubt  as  succeed- 
ing to  the  Holy  Roman  Empire.  Patriotic  murmurs 
will  soon  be  raised  to  recall  their  erring  German 
brothers  in  Switzerland.  The  theory  of  a  German 
Rhine  (some  filibustering  professor  will  explain  to 
us)  requires  that  it  flows  through  dominions  of  the 
Emperor  of  Germany  from  the  glaciers  to  the  sea. 
They  even  now  are  calling  out  for  the  rescue  of  their 
lost  brothers  in  Heligoland.1  There  are  quarrels 
enough  and  to  spare  ;  causes  and  "  races  "  enough  to 
embroil  Europe  for  a  century.  There  is  the  unburied 
Holstein  question,  the  Polish  question,  Panslavism, 
Czeckism,  Pan-Germanism,  the  Rhine  question,  the 
Belgian  question,  the  Heligoland  question,  the  Papal 
question  ;  why  not  the  Burgundian  question,  and  the 
restoration  of  the  empire  of  Charlemagne  ?  If  Europe 
is  to  be  recast  to  fit  the  crazy  pedantry  of  German 
professors,  the  Prussian  spread-eagle  will  give  us  all  a 
pleasant  time  of  it. 

Now  it  is  not  necessary  to  suppose  that  Prussia  is 
about  to  overrun  Europe  with  her  troops  as  she  is 
overrunning  France.  That  is  not  the  danger.  We 
have  not  come  to  that  point  of  weakness — we  non- 
German  people  of  Europe,  and  perhaps  even  German 
docility  would  have  a  limit  somewhere.  But  what  is 
to  be  feared  is  the  passing  of  the  undisputed  supremacy 
of  force  to  such  a  power  as  Prussia — organised  ex- 
clusively for  war,  retrograde,  feudal,  despotic, — more 
unscrupulous  and  ambitious  than  Napoleonism  itself. 
If  Prussia  returns  home  triumphant,  and  mistress  of 
the  greatest  fortresses  of  France,  Europe  is  handed 

1  Brothers  so  judiciously  rescued  in  1890,  and  so  happily  restored   by 
our  Imperialists  (1908). 


BISMARCKISM  23 

over  to  a  generation  of  arming  for  war ;  and  civilisa- 
tion is  thrown  back  incalculably.  The  military  and 
reactionary  powers  will  have  their  own  black  reign 
again  as  they  did  from  the  treaty  of  Vienna.  All  the 
life  of  Southern  Germany  will  be  crushed  out  of  her. 
In  Northern  Germany  there  is  not,  and  never  was, 
any  political  life.  Germany  at  this  moment  is  under 
the  rule  of  the  sword  as  completely  as  the  conquered 
provinces  of  France.  The  mild  German  may  hope 
and  protest,  but  he  is  mild  enough  in  his  own  country. 
He  has  waited,  with  the  patience  of  a  sentinel,  for 
some  civic  life  to  be  given  him  by  his  "good  and 
pious "  king  and  his  clever,  wise  Bismarck — but  he 
may  wait  for  a  century.  Germany  is  really  under 
martial  law  at  this  moment,  and  likely  so  to  remain. 
The  democratic  leaders  are  in  prison  for  protesting 
against  a  policy  of  annexation.  Public  opinion  is 
stifled  by  police  and  soldiery.  And  the  leaders  of 
the  people  who  raise  a  voice  against  militarism  have 
something  to  put  up  with  far  more  serious  than  the 
amenities  of  a  journal. 

Do  the  English  people  seriously  consider  what 
even  from  their  insular  point  of  view  this  portends  to 
them  ?  The  capitulation  of  Sedan  tore  up  the  treaties 
of  1856.  The  blood  and  sacrifices  of  the  Crimean 
war  are  thrown  away,  or  must  be  repeated.  Which 
alternative  will  England  choose  ?  Russia  is  free,  she 
is  actually  preparing  to  carry  out  her  schemes  of  con- 
quest in  the  East.  Prussia  is  openly  threatening  this 
country.  She  repeats,  and  her  drilled  press  and  litera- 
ture reiterate  impudent  charges  against  our  neutrality. 
There  is  an  ominous  courting  of  the  friendship  of 
America,  with  what  end  every  one  can  see.  Prussia 
openly  aims  at  maritime  power,  the  command  of  the 
Baltic,  and  the  recovery  of  Heligoland.  Denmark 
may  be  swallowed  up,  as  the  first  step  in  this  career. 


24   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Holland  may  be  the  next  leaf  in  the  northern  arti- 
choke. Belgium,  by  the  force  of  events,  may  be  com- 
pelled to  throw  herself  into  the  arms  of  France.  In  a 
word,  there  is  hardly  a  country  left  without  embroil- 
ment and  danger.  Europe  is  thrown  into  the  cauldron 
to  be  re-cast,  and  a  new  Holy  Alliance  is  forming  on 
the  principle  of  "  Blood  and  Iron "  which  England 
must  meet  absolutely  alone. 

What  should  be  our  policy  ?  I  do  not  hesitate  to 
say — to  check  the  progress  of  Prussian  ambition.  To 
check  it  by  diplomacy  if  possible  ;  but  by  arms  if 
necessary.  It  is  not  in  the  name  of  France,  nor  of 
the  French  Republic ;  but  in  the  highest  interests 
of  European  peace  and  progress  that  it  is  the  duty  of 
England  to  withstand  the  domination  of  a  new  empire 
of  the  sword.  It  is  time  to  raise  the  retrograde  and 
military  weight  of  Prussia  off  Europe,  and  to  force  her 
back  to  her  true  place.  How  is  this  to  be  done,  even 
if  we  wished  it,  men  ask  aghast,  and  what  can  resist 
Prussia  ?  As  if  statesmanship,  energy,  and  power  had 
left  this  country  for  ever.  Is  this  nation  Holland, 
Belgium,  Denmark,  that  it  is  to  count  for  nothing  in 
European  politics  ? 

In  the  first  place  it  is  to  be  done  by  statesmanship. 
If  England  threw  her  whole  heart  into  it,  and  it  was 
known  that  she  had  pledged  herself  to  it,  she  could 
form  a  great  coalition  of  neutral  states.  She  should 
put  herself  at  the  head  of  a  federation  of  the  weak, 
which  in  itself  would  be  a  strong  federation.  She 
should  bind  Sweden,  Denmark,  Holland,  Belgium,  and 
Switzerland  first  in  offensive  and  defensive  alliances, 
in  which  each  member  of  the  union  guaranteed  the 
inviolability  of  each  of  the  others  with  their  whole 
force.  She  should  put  herself  right  by  restoring  all 
her  foreign  possessions  in  Europe.  She  might  hold 
Heligoland  for  the  new  Federation  or  for  Denmark, 


BISMARCKISM  25 

to  whom  it  seems  to  belong.  She  might  restore 
Gibraltar  to  Spain,  and  Malta,  if  required,  to  Italy. 
Then  if  statesmanship  be  a  real  thing  at  all,  Spain, 
Italy,  Austria,  all  already  sympathising  with  France, 
could  be  brought  into  the  alliance.1  They  would  be 
feeble  hands  who,  using  such  a  force,  and  with  the 
weight  of  all  Western  Europe  in  one,  could  not  by  a 
moral  demonstration  alone  cause  the  German  to  pause, 
and  to  conclude  a  reasonable  peace. 

And  failing  this,  for  one,  I  would  shrink  from 
no  consequences.  If  Germany,  in  her  headstrong 
ambition,  insisted  on  the  destruction  of  France,  and  no 
joint  effort  of  neutrals  were  possible,  let  England 
throw  herself  into  the  rescue  of  France  with  her  whole 
forces,  moral  and  material,  naval  and  military.  If  the 
task  be  hopelessly  beyond  her  strength,  then  England 
has  ceased  to  be  a  great  power,  and  must  have  sunk 
back  indeed  since  the  days  of  Pitt  or  Chatham  or 
Marlborough.  It  is  a  heavy  task,  doubtless,  and  one 
not  to  be  done  in  a  day.  But  it  is  not  hopeless.  Let 
money,  guns,  and  supplies  be  poured  into  France,  with 
the  aid  of  the  English  fleet,  and  it  may  be  well  believed 
that  France  could  turn  the  tide.  She  has  a  million  of 
men  in  arms.  What  she  needs  is  time  and  every 
material  of  war.  And  if  that  did  not  suffice — let 
100,000  men  in  red,  equipped  with  every  munition  of 
war,  be  planted  in  some  spot  in  Brittany  or  Normandy 
where,  supplied  and  covered  by  the  fleet,  they  might 
take  up  a  new  Torres  Vedras. 

Then,  let  Paris  fall  or  not,  with  the  incalculable 
moral  support  and  inexhaustible  material  supplies  of 
England,  France  would  not  fall.  She  would  rise  more 
desperate  after  every  defeat,  and  more  resolved  after 
every  calamity.  She  might  be  driven  back  to  Brittany 

1  Something  like  such  a  pacific  alliance  or  entente  has  been  at  last 
secured,  mainly  by  the  King  (1908). 


26  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

or  the  Pyrenees.  She  might  endure  every  agony 
that  a  nation  could  suffer.  It  might  be  years 
before  the  struggle  ended.  But  once  let  it  be 
known  that  the  whole  heart  and  power  of  England 
was  on  her  side,  English  gold,  stores,  and  arms 
pouring  in  at  every  port,  and  an  English  entrenched 
camp  as  a  reserve,  and  the  tenacity  of  France  would 
do  the  rest ;  slowly  the  grip  of  the  eagle  would 
grow  feebler,  slowly  the  exhausted  conquerors  would 
withdraw,  and  at  length  the  armies  of  the  two 
western  nations,  brother  leaders  of  the  van  of  civilisa- 
tion, would  force  back  the  German  invader  to  his 
own  border.  Such  would  be  the  policy  of  Chatham, 
of  William,  or  of  Cromwell. 

It  is  a  great  task.  But  great  nations  have  great 
tasks  to  do,  and  statesmanship  is  the  doing  great 
tasks  ;  but  it  is  a  task  worth  every  sacrifice.  With 
France  prostrate  under  the  armed  heel  of  Germany, 
with  Germany  in  possession  of  Alsace  and  Lorraine, 
with  that  retrograde  military  power  the  acknowledged 
arbiter  of  Europe,  Europe  can  know  no  disarming,  no 
progress  for  a  generation.  I  disdain  to  answer  the 
canting  plea  that  these  provinces  can  add  to  the  safety 
of  Germany  or  the  peace  of  Europe.  It  is  obviously 
the  real  object  of  this  annexation,  to  enable  Prussia  to 
maintain  a  vast  military  establishment  and  vantage- 
ground,  from  which  to  take  Southern  Germany  in 
flank,  and  coerce  her  in  the  great  struggle  which  is 
about  to  commence  there.  The  regime  of  war,  of 
conquest,  of  subjugation  begins  again  j  and  civilisation 
is  arrested  for  generations. 

What  still  remains  for  France  ?  Simply  to  fight 
on.  France  cannot  be  conquered.  No  great  nation 
can.  The  cession  of  Alsace  and  Lorraine  is  not 
merely  the  surrender  of  two  provinces.  It  is  the 
delivering  up  the  country,  its  capital,  and  its  independ- 


BISMARCKISM  27 

ence,  bound  hand  and  foot,  to  a  ruthless  neighbour. 
It  is  what  no  Frenchman  worthy  of  the  name,  could 
assent  to.  "  Better  burn  France  to  ashes  rather,"  as 
Danton  said.  Let  us  take  a  parallel  case.  France 
(we  will  suppose),  in  a  sudden  and  unprovoked  war,  has 
seized  Belgium,  Holland,  and  Denmark,  and  formed 
along  the  whole  northern  coast  of  Europe  a  network 
of  arsenals,  which  sheltered  a  combined  fleet  far  larger 
and  stronger  than  any  possible  British  fleet.  For 
years  she  equips  this  fleet  with  the  avowed  purpose 
of  wresting  from  England  the  supremacy  of  the  sea. 
England  rings  with  indignation,  jealousy,  and  fear. 
In  an  evil  hour  an  English  ministry,  without  con- 
sulting the  nation,  hurls  the  country  into  war,  and 
attacks  the  French  fleet  in  its  moorings.  Through 
flagrant  incapacity  of  the  English  Admiralty  (a  not 
incredible  assumption)  the  entire  navy  of  England  is 
annihilated.  The  French  forces  invade  this  country. 
Everything  goes  down  before  them.  They  take  the 
arsenals,  and  hold  one-third  of  England,  wasting  it 
with  fire  and  sword.  The  dynasty  (perhaps  an  im- 
possible supposition)  is  swept  away  for  ever.  London 
still  holds  out,  and  throughout  England  vast  forces  are 
being  organised  for  defence.  The  only  terms  that  the 
conqueror  will  accept  are  the  permanent  possession  of 
Portsmouth  and  Plymouth,  their  harbours,  docks,  and 
forts,  with  Dorsetshire,  Devonshire,  and  Cornwall,  to 
be  incorporated  with  France,  on  the  plea  that  they 
were  once  possessions  of  the  Dukes  of  Normandy,  or 
were  once  inhabited  by  Bretons.  These  are  the  con- 
querors' terms.  England  is  still  not  exhausted  in  men, 
money,  arms,  or  material.  London  contains  an  army 
twice  as  numerous  as  its  besiegers.  The  north  of 
England  swarms  with  armies.  What  Englishman 
will  say  (with  his  name,  not  with  his  initials)  that  he 
would  call  on  his  countrymen  to  sign  such  a  peace  ? 


28   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

The  man  who  could  do  it,  or  talk  of  it,  must  have  the 
heart  of  a  slave. 

And  yet  there  are  men  quite  filled  with  moral 
indignation  that  Frenchmen  can  refuse  such  a  peace. 
They  talk  quite  grandly  of  the  guilt  of  refusing  such 
terms.  How  many  a  lost  cause  have  Englishmen 
applauded  —  the  Polish,  the  Circassian,  the  Arab 
defences,  the  defence  of  Hungary  and  Rome  in  1849, 
of  the  Danes  in  1864,  of  the  Confederates  in  1866, 
were  heroic  in  the  eyes  of  most  of  those  who  are  insult- 
ing the  defiance  of  France.  And  now  these  hypocrites 
— who  hate  France — call  on  her  to  yield  in  the  name 
of  peace  and  good  sense.  In  the  meantime  the  case 
of  France  is  not  hopeless.  Every  day  her  spirit  seems 
to  grow  more  resolute.  Paris  may  fall — may  have 
fallen  before  these  pages  are  published — but  that  is  not 
the  end.  It  may  be  that  this  is  but  the  beginning  of 
the  war,  and  not  its  end.  The  wealth  of  France  is 
boundless,  her  population  is  unexhausted,  her  natural 
resources  infinite.  She  has  nearly  a  million  of  men 
under  arms ;  she  has  six  or  seven  armies  in  the  field, 
and  all  her  seaboard  and  ports  untouched.  It  is  the 
fashion  to  sneer  at  her  efforts,  to  deny  her  courage, 
and  to  undervalue  her  resources.  For  my  part,  in 
spite  of  wild  speeches  and  divided  counsels,  I  call  the 
resolute  front  of  her  actual  rulers  heroic.  I  will  not 
be  curious  to  note  their  faults  or  their  follies.  I  will 
forgive  them  and  honour  them  for  carrying  on  the 
traditions  of  the  great  Danton,  and  for  uttering 
defiance  in  the  midst  of  unparalleled  disasters.  I  call 
the  rush  to  arms  of  all  able-bodied  Frenchmen  heroic, 
and  in  the  main  I  accept  that  as  a  fact.  I  call  the 
willingness  of  Frenchmen  to  bear  every  extremity 
rather  than  a  dishonourable  peace  heroic.  And  above 
all,  I  call  the  defence  of  Paris,  the  unity  of  its  multi- 
form population,  and  the  resolve  of  its  attitude  heroic. 


BISMARCKISM  29 

All  this  is  much  out  of  fashion  now.  It  is  easy  to 
make  sport  of  the  ravings  of  a  distracted  people  in  such 
a  crisis,  to  repeat  the  murmurs  of  the  cravens,  and 
to  paint  pictures  of  panic  here,  bombast  there  ;  of 
suspicion  in  one  place,  delusion  in  other,  and  dis- 
sensions everywhere.  We  all  forget  how  France 
now  lives  as  under  a  microscope,  and  thousands  of 
unfriendly  eyes  are  watching  every  spasm.  We  all 
forget  too  how  stupidly  a  Teutonic  people  mistakes 
the  excitement  of  a  Keltic  people  for  weakness. 
Their  ways  are  not  our  ways ;  but  it  does  not 
follow  that  big  words  go  always  with  little  deeds. 
It  is  easy  for  the  victors  to  be  dignified  and  calm  ; 
easier  especially  for  a  people  of  such  admirable  self- 
possession  and  so  perfectly  drilled  as  the  Germans. 
But  where  is  the  nation  in  the  agony  of  such 
mortal  strife  that  would  escape  confusion,  divided 
counsels,  and  wild  talk  ?  The  energy,  unity,  and 
patriotism  of  France  in  the  first  shock  are  far 
greater  than  was  shown  either  by  Prussian,  German, 
or  Austrian  after  Austerlitz,  Jena,  and  Wagram, 
greater  than  was  shown  by  the  great  American  people 
in  the  first  months  after  Bull's  Run.  Let  us  only 
trust  that  if  so  horrible  a  catastrophe  ever  should  befall 
this  nation,  all  civil  strife  and  parties  may  be  unknown, 
that  all  administrators  may  act  with  dignity  and  judg- 
ment, that  false  hopes  and  wild  speech  may  be  as  little 
heard  as  ungenerous  suspicions  ;  that  upon  the  annihi- 
lation of  the  whole  regular  force  and  the  loss  of  the 
whole  material  of  war  in  the  country,  a  million  of 
citizens  may  be  gathered  in  arms  in  two  months  ; 
that  seven  armies  may  be  organised,  equipped,  and 
armed  ;  that  bloodshed,  fire,  famine,  and  pillage  may 
not  break  the  spirit  of  our  people  ;  that  our  citizens 
may  calmly  submit  to  starvation  and  bombardment, 
and  that  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  the 


30  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

island  there  may  rise  up  only  one  cry — War  to  the 
knife,  rather  than  dishonourable  peace.1 

But  come  what  may  —  if  France  drive  out  the 
invader,  or  sink  under  his  weight — certain  considera- 
tions remain  for  the  statesman's  attention.  This  war 
involves  social  changes  greater  than  any  since  1789. 
The  war  has  been  caused  by  social  movements,  and  it 
must  issue  in  still  greater.  Bismarck  and  Napoleon 
were  each  driven  to  divert  the  energy  of  their  respec- 
tive nations  to  foreign  war  by  the  upheaving  of  the 
popular  spirit  at  home.  The  imminent  danger  to  his 
own  throne  at  last  drove  Napoleon  into  war.  The  very 
disasters  of  France  are  due  to  the  same  cause.  France 
(we  must  never  forget)  is  still  heaving  with  internal 
revolution.  There  the  great  social  struggle  between 
capital  and  labour,  that  prolonged  struggle  on  which 
England  is  entering,  and  to  which  Germany  is  approach- 
ing, is  already  far  advanced.  The  real  cause  of  the  war, 
of  the  disasters,  of  the  powerlessness  of  France,  is  one 
and  the  same  : — that  France  is  in  the  convulsion  of  a 
social  revolution.  She  is  divided  against  herself.  Work- 
man and  employer,  rich  and  poor,  stand  apart  in  two 
camps,  distrusting  each  other,  counter-working  each 
other  ;  and  thus  a  prey  to  political  adventurers.  France 
is  thus  for  a  time  weak  ;  and  falls  in  war  an  easy  victim  to 
the  unity  of  Germany,  in  which,  from  its  more  back- 
ward social  condition,  all  this  crisis  is  yet  to  come.  It 
is  very  probable  also  that  the  gradual  disintegration  of 
France  into  smaller  political  aggregates,  a  process  which 
awaits  the  larger  states  of  Europe,  has  already  begun. 
There  are  now  three  or  four  French  political  units.2 

1  As  we  know,  within  two  months  after  this  was  written,  Paris  was 
starved  into  surrender}  the  treachery  of  Bazaine  sacrificed  the  last  regular 
army  of  France ;  social  enmity  and  the  selfish  apathy  of  the  South  ruined 
the  defence  ;  and  Peace  was  made.     (1908). 

2  The  disintegrating  process  and  the  cause  of  Anti-militarism  have 
now  reached  an  ominous  degree  (1908). 


BISMARCKISM  31 

But  the  moment  France  has  weathered  the  storm, 
the  impulse  given  to  her  social  movement  will  be 
enormous.  The  Republic  has  been  established  ;  and 
the  Republic  itself  is  the  only  institution  in  France 
which  has  not  been  discredited.  France,  too,  has 
been  happily  relieved  of  that  incubus  which  has 
hitherto  rested  on  progress  —  her  army.  Those 
350,000  praetorians  —  those  marshals,  generals,  and 
staff;  guns,  standards,  material,  and  eagles  —  the 
whole  Chauvinist  camp,  from  Emperor  to  drummer- 
boy,  have  been  swept  into  space  and  into  ignominy. 
The  professional  soldier  in  France  is  morally  dead. 
Her  army,  the  curse  of  Europe  and  of  civilisation,  has 
gone  out  with  an  ill  savour.  It  was  not  the  decheance 
of  Napoleon  that  was  proclaimed  in  Paris  on  the  4th  of 
September,  but  the  decheance  of  militarism.  The  soldier 
is  become  an  anachronism  ;  the  symbol  of  national 
degradation.  The  only  sort  of  honour  has  been  won 
by  workmen  and  peasant  volunteers — a  true  citizen- 
army  of  national  guard.  For  the  first  time  in  French 
history,  the  workmen  of  the  great  towns  are  armed 
and  organised,  and  the  whole  of  the  new  army  from  top 
to  bottom  is  essentially  democratic.  In  a  military 
sense,  this  may  as  yet  be  a  weakness ;  but,  in  a 
political  sense,  it  means  the  emancipation  of  the 
people. 

Even  after  the  fall  of  Paris,  the  war  may  be  in- 
definitely prolonged.  But  it  must  end  some  day. 
And  then,  with  France  exhausted,  stripped  of  every- 
thing, wealth  and  the  means  of  wealth  annihilated,  she 
will  be  in  the  position  of  a  new  country  ;  capital  will 
be  in  search  of  labour,  and  labour  will  be  master  of 
the  situation.  However  long  the  war  continue,  and 
however  great  the  sufferings  of  France,  it  is  the  rich 
who  really  suffer.  The  poor,  so  long  as  they  keep 
their  own  skins  whole  and  are  not  actually  starving, 


32   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

do  not  lose  much,  for  the  simple  reason  that  they  have 
nothing  to  lose.  A  Prussian  invasion  to  them  in- 
volves no  greater  personal  loss  than  individual  distress, 
hard  times,  or  a  lock-out — indeed,  far  less,  for  they 
are  the  most  indispensable  part  of  the  public,  and  must 
be  fed. 

On  the  conclusion  of  peace,  therefore,  the  people, 
socially  and  politically,  will  be  masters  of  the  destinies 
of  France,  and  ultimately  of  Europe.  All  that  France 
loses  in  material  ascendancy  in  Europe,  she  will  gain 
in  moral  ascendancy.  Peace  cannot  be  made  in  such 
a  way  but  that  relatively  labour  shall  be  left  in  the 
ascendant.  It  was  so  after  the  hurly-burly  of  1793, 
and  it  will  be  so  again  after  1870.  And  the  workmen 
are  the  only  people  who  have  upheld  the  honour  of 
France.  Thus,  however  France  may  be  materially 
crippled,  the  cause  of  the  Republic  and  of  labour  will 
come  to  the  front.  Even  if  the  Republic  itself 
collapse  in  the  strife,  for  France  is  still  divided  into 
two  camps — the  rich  and  the  poor — the  republican 
element  will  be  strong.  And  France  will  retain  and 
increase  her  moral  influence.  Not  only  Napoleonism 
and  militarism  are  dechus  henceforth  in  France,  but 
something  else  ;  and  that  is,  the  indolent  extravagance 
of  the  rich.  The  degraded  and  selfish  pomp  of  the 
second  Empire  is  a  thing  of  the  past.  For  once  since 
1 793  liberty  and  equality  have  begun  to  be  realities. 

But  the  people  in  France  will  not  stand  alone. 
Round  them  will  gather  the  people  and  the  re- 
publicanism of  Europe.  In  all  the  sufferings  and 
humiliations  of  France,  this  cause  will  gain  a  new 
impulse.  From  henceforward  the  French  people 
alone,  even  in  the  eyes  of  German  democrats,  will  be 
felt  to  bear  the  standard  of  progress.  The  dangerous 
designs  of  Prussia,  her  retrograde  ambition,  will  be  the 
great  enemies  of  the  people  all  over  the  world.  Round 


BISMARCKISM  33 

the  workmen  of  France  those  of  England  have  long 
gathered ;  those  of  Switzerland,  Spain,  Italy,  and 
Germany  herself  are  gathering.  The  issue  is  so 
critical  for  the  future,  and  the  dangers  from  the  re- 
actionary power  are  so  serious,  that  they  override  all 
national  and  local  questions.  Now  it  will  neither  be 
England,  France,  nor  Germany  ;  but  Republic  against 
Monarchy.  Round  the  Prussian  throne  gather  all  the 
retrograde  principles ;  round  the  French  people  all 
the  progressive.  In  this  great  issue,  national  and 
party  questions  dwindle.  All  governments,  will  hence- 
forward be  alike  to  us.  Whig  or  Tory,  and  the  rest 
are  but  vestry-room  cries.  The  one  cause  in  which 
every  other  is  merged,  is  the  cause  of  the  People. 

Not  that  this  great  struggle  need  be  one  of  arms 
and  of  bloodshed.  It  is  essentially  a  moral  struggle  ; 
one  of  principles.  The  needle-gun  has  beaten  down 
the  army  of  Napoleon,  but  it  cannot  beat  back  French 
ideas ;  of  all  others,  not  the  social  ideas  of  the  French 
people.  Purged  in  the  fire  of  this  crisis,  these  ideas 
will  regain  new  purity  and  life.  They  are  swaying 
and  heaving  English  society.  Germany  itself  is 
honeycombed  with  them.  And  long  and  fierce  ere 
long  will  be  the  struggle  in  Germany  itself  between 
Bismarckism  and  Industrialism  —  between  blood  and 
iron  and  the  German  people.  But  whatever  else  may 
be  the  issue,  we  may  be  sure  that  the  real  spirit  that 
is  ultimately  to  triumph  after  this  frightful  catastrophe 
will  not  be  a  military  one.  In  spite  of  all  the  fighting, 
in  spite  of  the  deadly  hatred  of  race  begotten  by  this 
contest,  and  the  undying  spirit  of  revenge  and  pride  it 
will  leave  behind,  the  industrial  regime  is  antagonistic 
to  the  military ;  and  the  increased  ascendency  of  the 
people  must  be  fatal  in  the  long  run  to  militarism. 

There  is  much  in  this,  too,  very  worthy  of  thought 
by  our  own  governing  classes.  The  attitude  of  the 

D 


34  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

French  Republic  and  people  under  the  German  yoke 
has  sent  a  thrill  through  the  English  workmen  greater 
than  anything  which  has  happened  since  1848.  They 
are  watching  their  own  rulers  with  ill-restrained  im- 
patience and  indignation.  To  them  the  cause  of 
labour  and  the  Republic  is  one  and  the  same  all  over 
the  world.  The  interests  of  English  landlords,  of 
British  merchants  and  shopkeepers,  of  Whig  and  Tory 
governments,  of  Liberal  or  Conservative  cabals,  to 
them  are  dust  in  the  balance.  They  are  loudly  and 
distinctly  calling  on  their  rulers  to  save  the  French 
Republic  from  extinction  by  German  invaders.  For 
that  they  are  ready  for  sacrifices  in  blood  and  money. 
One  thing  they  will  not  suffer.  They  will  not 
see  their  governing  classes  shrinking  from  any  real 
action  in  Europe,  and  timidly  reducing  this  country 
to  a  nullity,  whilst  feebly  patching  up  our  own  rotten 
military  system  at  home  by  resorting  to  the  device  of 
tyranny  abroad.  A  real  reorganisation  of  the  army  in 
a  national  sense  is  yet  far  off.  Really  to  make  it  such 
an  army  as  the  Prussian  is  simply  impossible.  This 
English  nation,  at  any  rate,  will  never  be  drilled  into 
Bismarckism.  And  any  feeble  attempts  to  Prussianise 
this  country,  to  raise  a  conscription,  in  fact — to  force 
the  working  people  into  the  ranks,  will  be  met  and 
resisted  by  all  and  every  means.  The  attempt  forcibly 
to  enrol  English  citizens  will  be  stopped  by  every 
resource  known  to  a  people  defending  their  personal 
liberty  —  the  ultima  ratio  populi  not  even  excepted. 
There  are  men  enough  in  this  country  quite  capable 
of  seeing  what  is,meant,  and  of  organising  the  national 
resistance.  To  attempt  such  a  plot  against  all  the 
traditions  of  English  liberty  would  be  the  end  of 
governing  class,  monarchy,  and  constitution.  No 
blood-tax  will  ever  be  levied  in  English  homes. 

November  15,  1870. 


II 

THE   DUTY   OF  ENGLAND 

(January  17,  1871) 

The  following  Essay  was  written  during  the  franco-German 
War  in  the  middle  of  January,  and  was  the  first  article 
in  the  Fortnightly  Review  of  February  1871  (vol.  ix.}. 
At  the  time  of  writing  Paris  was  on  the  eve  of  capitulat- 
ing through  famine,  and  Gambetta  was  calling  on  the 
country  to  continue  the  struggle.  The  writer  was  still 
sanguine  that  England  would  be  roused  to  take  a  part. 
He  and  his  friends  had  organised  a  great  meeting  of 
Trades  Unionists  in  St.  James's  Hall  in  support  of  the 
French  Republic  (January  /<?)/  and  many  influential 
sections  of  English  society  joined  that  cause.  The  govern- 
ment of  Mr.  Gladstone  declined  to  interfere  in  any  way, 
as  may  be  read  in  vol.  ii.  of  the  Life.  Now  that  we  have 
the  Memoirs  of  all  the  chief  politicians  concerned,  English, 
German,  and  French,  the  writer  sees  no  reason  to  modify 
the  language  he  used  in  1871,  nor  can  he  admit  that  the 
policy  he  advocated  was  either  impracticable  or  unwise 
(1908). 

THE  true  question  which  this  war  presents  for 
Englishmen  to  answer,  is  not  whether  France  or 
Germany  have  done  most  to  provoke  each  other,  nor 
whether  France  or  Germany  have  the  larger  sum  of 
wrongs  to  avenge,  nor  whether  it  is  desirable  for 
Germany  to  be  one  and  to  be  powerful,  nor  yet 

35 


36  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

whether  much  that  is  vicious  be  not  mingled  in 
French  policy  and  the  French  character.  The  real 
question  is  none  of  these  j  and  it  is  sophistry  only 
which  can  lead  us  off  upon  these  issues.  The  true 
question  is  a  very  plain  one.  It  is  this.  Is  it  for  the 
interest  of  civilisation^  or  of  England^  that  France  should 
be  trampled  on  and  dismembered  by  Germany  ? 

I  say  the  former  are  all  false  issues,  and  have  little 
to  do  with  the  matter  before  us.  Let  us  grant  that 
the  larger  share  in  provoking  this  long -preparing 
struggle  must  be  laid  at  the  door  of  France  ;  as  I 
certainly  shall  grant  she  wantonly  commenced  it.  Is 
it  enough  for  a  nation  to  have  wrongfully  entered 
upon  war,  to  make  us  rejoice  at  seeing  it  torn  in 
pieces ;  rejoice  over  a  policy  which  must  hand  over 
Europe  to  discord  and  hate  ?  To  sum  up  the  historical 
wrongs  of  Germany  may  exercise  the  ingenuity  of 
biographers ;  but  are  politicians  ready  to  make  retalia- 
tion the  new  key  of  international  relations  ?  A  man 
may  devoutly  desire  the  unity  of  Germany,  without 
finding  it  precisely  in  the  smoking  ruins  of  Paris.  It 
may  be  the  best  guarantee  of  peace  that  Germany 
should  be  powerful.  It  is  a  bold  leap  from  that  to 
welcoming  six  months  of  pillage,  fire,  and  slaughter. 
We  may  wish  to  see  Germany  both  safe  and  strong, 
without  caring  to  see  France  mangled  and  frantic 
with  despair.  We  never  deny  that  the  French  temper 
has  many  a  blot,  and  French  history  many  a  foul 
page.  We  may  even  hate  French  folly  and  vice. 
What  nation  has  not  its  own  follies  and  its  own  vices  ? 
What  puling  Judas  is  he  who  would  sneer  away  the 
life  of  a  nation  by  these  hypocrite's  laments  ?  We 
have  never  yet  admitted  that  the  vices  of  national 
character  entitled  one  race  to  come  forward  as  the 
executioner  of  another,  to  wreak  its  hate  and  fill  its 
greed  in  the  name  of  national  morality.  We  have 


THE  DUTY  OF  ENGLAND  37 

ceased  to  regard  a  conquering  horde  as  the  chosen 
avenger  of  God,  or  national  disaster  as  the  same  with 
national  guilt. 

We  may  admit  all  these  propositions  of  the  apolo- 
gists of  Prussian  invasion,  and  yet  the  case  is  not 
answered,  nor  even  touched.  Suppose  France  wrong 
at  first,  to  have  been  wrong  in  the  past,  to  have  been 
and  to  be,  as  a  nation,  foolish  and  guilty.  Suppose 
that  the  unity  of  Germany  is  the  greatest  of  human 
goods,  and  its  supremacy  the  best  hope  of  mankind ; 
what  has  all  this  to  do  with  the  long-drawn  torture  of 
France,  with  the  firing  of  her  citizens,  and  the  tramp- 
ling on  her  provinces  and  her  children  ?  The  great- 
ness of  Germany  is  not  secured,  the  guilt  of  France  is 
not  cured,  by  dragging  out  a  brutalising  and  fiendish 
war,  until  agony  itself  seems  to  sustain  life  and  to 
inspire  defiance.  All  the  specious  grounds  on  which 
some  still  try  to  justify  all  this,  no  more  justify  this 
war  than  they  justify  Pandemonium.  There  is  but 
one  true  question.  What  good  end  requires  all  this 
fire  and  this  blood  ?  Is  it  for  the  interest  of  civilisation 
that  France  should  be  trodden  down  and  dismembered  by 
Germany  ? 

To  say  that  France  is  being  trampled  on  and  dis- 
membered, is  to  use  words  far  short  of  the  truth. 
For  six  months  one-third  of  France  has  been  given  up 
to  fire  and  sword.  For  300  or  400  miles  vast  armies 
have  poured  on.  Every  village  they  have  passed 
through  has  been  the  victim  of  what  is  only  organised 
pillage.  Every  city  has  been  practically  sacked, 
ransacked  on  system  ;  its  citizens  plundered,  its  civil 
officials  terrorised,  imprisoned,  outraged,  or  killed. 
The  civil  population  has  been,  contrary  to  the  usage 
of  modern  warfare,  forced  to  serve  the  invading 
armies,  brutally  put  to  death,  reduced  to  wholesale 
starvation  and  desolation.  Vast  tracts  of  the  richest 


38   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

and  most  industrious  districts  of  Europe  have  been 
deliberately  stripped  and  plunged  into  famine,  solely 
in  order  that  the  invaders  might  make  war  cheaply. 
Irregular  troops,  contrary  to  all  the  practices  of  war, 
have  been  systematically  murdered,  and  civil  popu- 
lations indiscriminately  massacred,  solely  to  spread 
terror.  A  regular  system  of  ingenious  terrorism  has 
been  directed  against  civilians,  as  horrible  as  anything 
in  the  history  of  civil  or  religious  wars.  Large  and 
populous  cities  have  been,  not  once,  but  twenty, 
thirty,  forty  times  bombarded  and  burnt,  and  the 
women  and  children  in  them  wantonly  slaughtered, 
with  the  sole  object  of  inflicting  suffering.  All  this 
has  been  done,  not  in  licence  or  passion,  but  by  the 
calculating  ferocity  of  scientific  soldiers.  And,  lastly, 
when  the  last  chance  of  saving  Paris  was  gone,  and  it 
became  a  matter  of  a  few  weeks  of  famine,  they  must 
needs  fire  and  shatter  a  city  of  2,000,000  of  souls. 

Let  us  remember  that  all  this  was  done  and  carried 
on  for  five  months  after  France  had  sued  for  peace  in 
the  dust ;  and  had  offered  what  was  practically  every- 
thing except  her  national  independence,  and  the  honour 
and  self-respect  of  every  Frenchman.  It  is  well  known 
that  there  were  no  serious  terms  which  France  would 
have  rejected  short  of  dismemberment.  To  give  up 
2,000,000  of  the  best  citizens  of  France,  and  make 
them  permanent  prisoners  to  Germany,  is  what  no 
nation  in  Europe  would  do  whilst  its  powers  remained. 
Let  Englishmen  quietly  contemplate  surrendering 
Sussex  and  Hampshire  to  an  invader,  to  be  per- 
manently annexed  to  France.  This  is  what  French- 
men are  coolly  exhorted  to  do.  But  it  was  much 
more  than  this.  To  give  the  possession  of  Metz  and 
Strasburg,  the  Moselle  and  the  Vosges,  to  united 
Germany,  is  simply  to  make  France  her  prisoner,  to 
make  France  what  Piedmont  was  with  Austria  in  the 


THE  DUTY  OF  ENGLAND  39 

Quadrilateral,  what  England  would  be  if  the  whole 
coast  from  Dover  to  the  Isle  of  Wight  were  made 
permanently  French  soil. 

And  because  Frenchmen  rejected  these  terms,  terms 
which  the  vilest  of  Englishmen  would,  in  their  own 
case,  turn  from  with  scorn,  Prussia  has  poured  on, 
revelling  in  this  orgy  of  blood.  In  politics  there  are 
no  abstract  rights.  All  matters  between  nations  are  a 
balance  of  advantages.  And  even  if  there  were,  on  the 
side  of  Germany,  some  decent  claim  for  what  they 
sought,  humanity  will  brand  the  people  that  insisted' 
on  that  claim  through  all  the  hideous  cost  which  it 
involved.  A  gambler  (to  pursue  their  favourite 
metaphor)  may  have  a  fair  claim  to  the  stakes  he  has 
won  ;  but  we  still  call  him  a  murderer  who  deliberately 
kills  the  loser  that  he  may  seize  them.  The  language- 
boundary  may  seem  such  an  obvious  arrangement  to  a 
pedant  at  his  desk  ;  and  the  strategic  frontier  may  run 
glibly  off  the  journalist's  pen.  One  nation  may  be 
most  moderate  in  its  demand  ;  and  the  other  may  be 
most  blind  in  its  resistance.  But  if,  in  the  hard  proof 
of  facts,  this  natural  boundary  or  this  moderate  claim 
can  be  won  solely  by  desolating  a  million  homes,  and 
by  turning  provinces  into  one  vast  charnel-house,  it  is 
only  the  tyrant  with  the  heart  of  steel  who  seeks  that 
end  at  such  a  cost. 

But  I  had  forgotten  "the  security"  and  "the  per- 
manent peace "  of  Germany  !  The  security  of 
Germany  which,  unapt  for  war,  with  only  a  few  poor 
fortresses  on  the  Rhine,  and  but  a  million  of  mere 
armed  citizens,  will  never  be  able  to  rest  for  fear  of 
France,  without  a  new  line  of  French  fortresses, 
strongholds,  and  mountain  passes.  She  will  never  be 
really  safe  till  she  has  2,000,000  of  Frenchmen  writhing 
under  her  grasp  on  her  French  border.  The  poor 
wolves  must  have  a  fold  to  protect  them  from  the 


40   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

greedy  sheep.  And  how  can  the  great  German  and 
the  great  French  nations  ever  dwell,  side  by  side,  in 
unity  and  peace  hereafter,  until  every  French  field  has 
been  trampled  by  the  Uhlan,  till  every  French  home 
has  given  up  its  one  or  two  dead,  or  at  least  smelt  the 
petroleum  of  our  highly  cultivated  troopers  ?  Once 
plant  in  every  French  heart  a  feeling  that  a  German  is 
a  Red  Indian  savage  on  a  scalping-party  ;  sow  a  blood 
feud  which  the  very  infants  may  suck  in  with  their 
mothers'  milk,  and  we  shall  have  ample  security  and  a 
permanent  peace  evermore  ! 

Can  we  doubt  that  the  real  object  of  Germany  is 
the  dismemberment  of  France  ?  I  know  that  the 
apologists  of  Prussia  here,  straining  out  the  last  dregs 
of  captious  objection,  ask  us  sometimes,  with  an  air  of 
honest  doubt,  how  we  know  that  Bismarck  insists  on 
the  dismemberment  of  France  ;  and  one  of  these 
advocates  has  told  us,  almost  indignantly,  that  if  he 
thought  the  Prussian  had  taken  Metz  (for  instance) 
with  any  intention  of  appropriating  it  for  himself,  he 
for  one  would  be  the  last,  etc.,  etc.  To  this  point  is 
the  case  of  Prussia  reduced  !  How  do  we  know,  for- 
sooth, that  Germany  insists  on  incorporating  all  Alsace 
and  at  least  half  Lorraine,  the  Vosges,  the  Moselle, 
Strasburg,  Metz,  and  a  string  of  French  fortresses,  the 
whole  "  language-boundary,"  as  the  cant  runs,  and 
something  more^  to  be  settled  by  Count  Moltke  ?  We 
know  it  because,  whatever  journalists  here  may  find  it 
convenient  to  say,  every  utterance  in  Germany,  official 
and  semi-official,  combines  to  tell  us  so.  We  all  know 
now  how  completely  Count  Bismarck  controls  and 
inspires  the  whole  well-affected  press  of  Germany,  and 
muzzles  the  ill-affected  ;  how  officials  and  aspirants  to 
office  watch  his  every  look  ;  how  journalists  and  pro- 
fessors truckle  to  his  nod.  With  one  consent  they  all 
tell  us  that  Germany  must  have  at  least  all  this,  and 


THE  DUTY  OF  ENGLAND  41 

an  indefinite  something  more.  If  the  words  of  official 
journals  and  publicists  in  high  favour  are  worth  any- 
thing when  they  assure  us  that  Count  Bismarck  wants 
nothing  but  a  united  and  peaceful  Germany,  we  may 
trust  them  not  to  misrepresent  him  when  they  tell  us 
he  wants  Alsace  and  Lorraine.  To  such  a  length  has 
the  belief  of  this  run,  that  Count  Bismarck  cannot 
afford  to  disappoint  it.  And  yet,  seeing  the  set  of 
this  current,  and  the  concurrence  of  all  who  were 
supposed  to  represent  him,  he  has  never  directly  or 
indirectly  attempted  to  check  it.  Whether  Count 
Bismarck  demands  Alsace  and  Lorraine  or  not,  it  is 
plain  that  Germany  does,  and  believes  them  to  be  hers 
as  completely  as  if  peace  were  signed.  Men  of  sense 
judge  matters  of  politics  by  what  seems  reasonable  on 
a  balance  of  probabilities,  and  cannot  be  stopped  to 
answer  every  wild  suggestion  of  an  advocate  whose  case 
is  desperate. 

Whatever  Count  Bismarck  may  find  it  at  present 
convenient  to  say,  or  not  to  say,  it  is  plain  to  any  one 
of  common  sense  that  Germany  most  undoubtedly  does 
demand  large  provinces  of  France,  several  of  her  chief 
fortresses,  and  a  long  line  of  strongholds.  If  not,  if 
Germany  is  continuing  the  war  for  only  some  small 
object,  even  let  us  say  for  Strasburg,  the  invasion 
assumes  a  still  more  wanton  character.  Practical 
politicians  will  not  strain  the  excited  words  of  M. 
Jules  Favre  quite  literally,  pronounced  as  they  were  in 
September  ;  nor  can  they  doubt  that  after  an  unbroken 
succession  of  fresh  calamities,  Frenchmen  would  have 
been  inclined  to  terms  had  the  Germans  really  been 
content  with  anything  short  of  the  dismemberment  of 
their  country.  Had  Germany  no  such  end,  then  the 
last  four  months  of  horror  have  had  no  purpose  but  to 
satisfy  the  lust  of  military  glory.  But  as  every  utter- 
ance of  those  Germans  who  had  the  best  right  to  know 


42   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

has  declared,  so  every  act  in  the  dealing  with  the 
conquered  provinces  has  proved,  that  the  wrenching  off 
most  vital  members  of  the  French  nation  is  the  very 
least  of  the  demands  of  Germany. 

It  may  well  be  that  Count  Bismarck's  ultimate 
intentions  are  not  yet  fully  known.  But  it  is  not  that 
he  will  ask  less,  but  a  great  deal  more^  than  has  yet 
been  claimed  for  him.  When  did  he  ever  yet  stay  his 
hand  in  open  violence,  except  that  he  saw  his  way  to 
his  end  by  artifice  ?  If  he  gave  up  forcing  on  the 
Prussian  people  his  system  of  army  extension,  it  was 
only  to  rouse  their  military  passions  more  fiercely  by 
corrupting  them  with  baits  to  their  vanity.  When  he 
closed  the  war  against  Denmark,  it  was  only  that  he 
saw  his  way  to  seizing  her  territory  by  treachery  and 
fraud.  When  he  made  peace  after  Sadowa,  it  was 
because  he  saw  that  secret  diplomacy  could  thenceforth 
effect  the  rest  of  his  programme.  Peace  or  war, 
fraud  or  force,  are  with  him  only  different  means  to 
the  same  end — the  military  aggrandisement  of  Prussia. 
He  uses  both  alternately,  always  in  the  same  onward 
path.  Like  the  lion  in  the  fable,  if  he  is  great  in 
bringing  down  the  prey,  he  is  yet  greater  in  securing 
the  whole  of  it  to  himself  by  chicanery  or  threats. 
And  it  is  to  this  man,  as  false  and  as  insatiate  as  the  ideal 
of  Macchiavelli,  that  Europe  is  to  confide  for  wisdom 
and  moderation. 

It  is  but  too  true  that  we  have  not  Count  Bismarck's 
real  demands.  For  my  part,  I  should  wonder  if  the 
world  has  yet  heard  the  half  of  them.  His  enemies  as 
yet  have  found  that  to  make  peace  with  Count  Bismarck 
is  as  hard  a  bargain  as  to  continue  war  with  him  ; 
perhaps  even  a  harder.  The  greatest  of  the  German 
chiefs  loudly  declare  that  they  will  be  satisfied  with 
nothing  short  of  reducing  France  to  a  second  or  a 
third-rate  Power.  One  of  the  foremost  long  since 


THE  DUTY  OF  ENGLAND  43 

explained  this  to  mean  that  she  was  to  be  placed  in 
the  position  of  Spain.  Others  use  the  phrase  "of 
annihilating  the  power "  of  France.  The  "  Red 
Prince,"  as  they  delight  to  call  him  in  the  Mohican 
dialect  of  the  camp,  announced  his  intention  of 
"destroying  the  power"  of  France.  Now,  when 
have  these  military  chiefs  not  kept  their  threats  ? 
Morally  speaking,  they  are  men  on  the  level  of  the 
Black  Prince,  Wallenstein,  or  Charles  the  Twelfth — 
relics  of  a  past  age ;  strong,  able,  born  soldiers  j  of 
an  insatiable  ambition,  and  scorning  everything  but 
military  honour.  To  them  the  annihilation  of  France 
is  just  as  worthy  an  object  as  it  was  to  Catherine  of 
Russia  to  destroy  Poland  or  to  crush  Turkey.  They 
honestly  believe  themselves  capable  of  it.  What  is  to 
prevent  their  attempting  it  ?  The  Prussian  soldier- 
caste  conceives  the  destruction  of  France  to  be  the 
most  glorious  of  all  achievements  ;  and  the  Prussian 
soldier-caste  is  absolute  master  for  the  present  of  the 
German  people.  Count  Bismarck  is  but  the  organ  of 
that  caste,  its  one  man  of  genius  who  has  seen  how  to 
dress  up  that  singular  mediaeval  figure  as  the  champion 
of  modern  ideas,  and  the  leader  of  the  people.  But 
Count  Bismarck  has  not  changed  the  lanz-knecht 
heart  within  that  caste ;  it  beats  fiercely  within  him, 
too.  And  though  he  can  force  its  tongue  to  talk  in  the 
language  of  modern  statesmen,  its  true  nature  is  to  be 
found  in  men  to  whom  pity  is  unknown,  and  progress 
a  by-word,  men  between  whom  and  modern  civilisa- 
tion there  is  a  feud  as  deep  as  between  backwoodsmen 
and  Sioux.  These  are  the  men — no  boasters,  and  no 
madmen — who  have  declared  in  tones  not  loud  but 
deep,  for  the  annihilation  of  France  as  a  great  Power. 
What  is  to  stand  between  these  men  and  their  end  ? 
The  intelligence  of  Germany  ?  But  every  one  who 
knows  Germany  has  seen — for  my  part  I  have  seen  for 


44   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

twenty  years  —  gathering  up  in  the  minds  of  the 
literary  and  military  classes  of  Prussia  a  hatred  of 
France,  Frenchmen,  and  French  ideas  more  deadly 
than  anything  we  know  of  in  race-feuds.  And  with 
this  hatred  there  went  a  deep,  fierce  thirst  to  humble 
France  one  day  in  the  dust.  I  do  not  pretend  that 
this  feeling  existed  outside  the  soldier  and  the  academic 
class.  In  both,  I  believe,  it  was  based  on  mortified 
pride.  Prussians,  conscious  of  their  wonderful  power 
both  for  war  and  in  thought,  were  stung  with  rage 
when  they  saw  how  little  their  unapproachable  pre- 
eminence was  recognised  in  Europe,  and  how  much 
French  egotism  and  versatility  had  carried  off"  from 
them  their  legitimate  honours.  Be  the  cause  what  it 
may,  men  who  have  long  watched  this  intense  hatred, 
existing,  I  admit,  in  only  two  classes,  and  of  course 
not  in  all  members  of  them,  such  men  have  felt  and 
insisted  for  years  that  the  most  gigantic  war  in  history 
must  be  the  issue  of  it. 

It  has  come  ;  and  this  hatred  has  filled  its  maw,  and 
has  swollen  to  incredible  proportions.  What,  then,  is 
to  stop  it  from  working  out  its  avowed  end — the 
annihilation  of  France  as  a  great  Power  ?  The 
Crown  Prince  ?  And  men  can  build  all  their  hopes 
on  a  life,  which  a  stray  Chassepot  bullet  may  end,  to 
give  us  for  twenty  years  the  regency  of  the  Red 
Prince.  Who  is  to  stop  it  ?  The  intelligence  of 
Germany,  now  employed  in  inventing  apologies  for 
every  act  of  aggression  ?  The  good  sense  of  the 
German  people  ? — But  the  German  people  are  now 
only  the  German  rank  and  file,  and  public  opinion  is 
insubordination.  The  Great  Powers  of  Europe  ?— 
But  they  are  employed  in  doing  reverence  to  the  new 
Emperor,  with  the  ministers  of  "  Happy  England  "  at 
their  head.  Let  us  rest  assured  that  the  Prussian 
chiefs  will  give  up  their  project  of  annihilating  the 


THE  DUTY  OF  ENGLAND          45 

power  of  France  for  one  cause  only — that  they  find  it 
impossible.  Till  they  find  it  impossible  they  will  try, 
in  spite  of  the  conviction  of  honest  burghers  in 
Fatherland  that  they  are  a  quiet  home- loving  race, 
and  in  spite  of  goody-goody  platitudes  from  courtly 
professors. 

Count  Bismarck  has  certainly  not  told  us  his 
ultimate  demands.  They  will  include  all  that  has 
yet  been  asked  for  in  territory  with  a  large  addition 
(perhaps  that  of  Nancy  and  the  whole  of  Lorraine). 
But  there  will  be  other  demands  not  necessarily  of 
territory  and  perhaps  not  immediately  disclosed,  the 
effect  of  which  will  be  to  leave  France  absolutely  at 
the  mercy  of  Germany.  Austria  is  now  of  less 
account  in  Germany  than  she  was  at  the  moment  of 
peace,  and  Denmark  is  also  of  less  account  in  the 
Baltic  than  when  she  gave  up  the  struggle.  Count 
Bismarck  is  a  swordsman  who  gives  wourtds  from 
which  his  adversaries  do  not  recover  ;  but  from  which 
they  grow  weaker  and  weaker.  And  when  he  wipes 
from  his  sword  the  blood  shed  in  this  great  war,  it  will 
be  to  leave  France  permanently  crippled.  Who  or 
what  is  to  stay  him  ? 

Let  us  take  merely  the  already  announced  demands 
of  Prussia,  and  see  how  France  will  stand  at  the  end 
of  the  war.  There  will  first  be  an  enormous  war 
indemnity.  Its  sum-total  will,  in  truth,  be  some- 
thing as  yet  unconceived.  It  will  be  measured,  how- 
ever, not  by  the  demands  of  Germany,  but  by  the 
limit  of  what  it  is  possible  by  direct  or  indirect  means 
to  squeeze  out  of  France.  There  will  then  be  the 
prostration  of  France  by  the  exhaustion  of  the  war,  and 
the  desolation  and  famine  of  about  one-third  of  her 
area.  She  will  probably  be  compelled  to  cede  some  of 
her  colonies,  and  may  possibly  be  restricted  in  her 
standing  army.  Metz,  Strasburg,  with  the  whole 


46  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

chain  of  fortresses  on  the  Moselle  and  Vosges  line 
from  Longwy  to  Belfort  will  form  the  rampart,  the 
guns  of  which  are  directed  upon  her  heart.  The 
whole  of  the  French  will  thus  be  added  to  the  whole 
of  the  German  strongholds  along  the  left  district  of 
the  Rhine,  and  consolidated  into  a  complex  chain 
more  tremendous  than  anything  in  Europe.  It  will 
be  the  Austrian  Quadrilateral  multiplied  tenfold ;  a 
line  for  defence  preposterously  overdone  ;  for  offence 
almost  irresistible.  This  vast  line  of  forts  will  hold 
the  east  of  France  in  a  vice.  Within  their  walls 
100,000  men  may  easily  in  peace  be  housed,  and 
around  them  500,000  may  easily  in  war  be  sheltered. 
They  are  ten  days'  march  from  Paris.  And  between 
them  and  Paris  not  a  single  fortress,  not  a  single 
military  depot,  and  scarcely  a  single  defensible  line  of 
country  exists. 

Now,  without  giving  too  much  importance  to 
strategic  frontiers,  it  is  impossible  to  be  blind  to  what 
follows  when  a  strong  power  posts  itself  in  a  menacing- 
position.  If  Antwerp  in  French  hands  would  be  a 
pistol  pointed  at  the  heart  of  England,  if  Sebastopol 
was  a  standing  menace  to  Constantinople,  if  the  Quad- 
rilateral gave  Austria  the  command  of  North  Italy, 
then  France,  with  nothing  between  her  capital  and 
this  vast  strategic  line,  would  be  prostrate  at  the  feet 
of  Germany.  A  Power  which  commands  a  million  of 
men,  with  the  overwhelming  superiority  now  proved 
in  a  hundred  victories,  possessing  along  the  left  side  of 
the  Rhine  the  chief  of  all  the  great  fortresses  of  Europe, 
and  a  quadruple  quintuple  network  of  strongholds  in 
which  the  resources  of  nature  have  been  used  by  the 
skill  of  two  nations,  would  hold  France  in  the  hollow 
of  her  hand.  A  fortress  is  as  useful  for  the  most  part 
for  offence  as  for  defence,  and  with  the  whole  of  the 
eastern  fortresses  of  France  turned  over  to  Germany, 


THE  DUTY  OF  ENGLAND  47 

and  the  heart  and  capital  of  France  turned  naked  to 
their  guns,  Germany  would  be  as  absolutely  mistress 
of  France  as  Austria  in  Mantua  and  Verona  was 
mistress  of  Lombardy  and  Venetia.  Hand  over  Alsace 
and  Lorraine,  and  France  stands  disarmed — the  prisoner 
of  armed  Germany.  It  is  easy  for  those  who  turn  the 
selfish  growl  of  the  tradesmen  into  a  sneer,  to  cry  out 
with  a  gibe — "  What  are  two  or  three  departments  out 
of  seventy  ?  what  are  two  millions  out  of  forty  ?  now 
you  are  beaten,  pay  up  the  stakes,  and  for  God's  sake 
let  us  get  to  business  !  "  So  he  with  the  money-bag  : 
but  politicians  of  common  sense  know  that  this  is  no 
mere  question  of  surrendering  broad  provinces  or  even 
of  giving  up  good  citizens.  It  is  not  a  prince  losing 
an  appanage,  or  a  nation  losing  a  subject  province.  It 
is  the  life  or  death  of  France  as  a  great  Power.  It  is 
her  independence  as  a  nation.  It  is  whether  she  shall 
be  one  of  the  Powers  of  Europe,  or  the  State  prisoner 
of  Imperial  Germany. 

"  France,"  say  the  optimists,  "  will  be  always  a 
great  Power,  come  what  may."  Perhaps  so  j  but 
not  if  the  Prussian  chiefs  have  their  way.  The 
wretched  juggle  about  the  language,  and  the  old 
possessions  of  the  Reich,  the  whole  antiquarian 
twaddle  about  Elsass  and  Lothringen,  form  only  one 
of  Bismarck's  tricks  to  amuse  the  bookworms  ;  who, 
good,  silly  souls,  are  flapping  their  wings  with  the 
glee  they  would  feel  if  some  one  turned  up  the  real 
sword  of  Barbarossa,  or  proposed  to  revive  the  worship 
of  Odin.  "  The  sword  of  Barbarossa  !  "  cry  the  learned 
geese,  "es  lebe  der  Kaiser  !  let  us  try  if  it  will  cut 
off"  men's  heads.  Oh,  beautifully !  See  how  they 
fly  off,  and  how  the  corpses  writhe  !  Lieb  Vaterland, 
magst  ruhig  seyn  !  "  So  do  the  professors  rejoice 
exceedingly.  For  political  childishness  and  social  im- 
morality no  one  comes  near  your  true  Dryasdust.  So 


48   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

throughout  all  Germany  Teufelsdrockh,  with  immense 
glee,  is  airing  the  biographies  of  the  Imperial  vassals. 
Then,  again,  all  the  learned  strategic  stuff  about  the 
line  of  the  Vosges,  and  the  indispensability  of  this, 
and  the  importance  of  that  to  the  defence  of  Father- 
land, and  the  mysterious  references  to  the  omniscient 
Moltke,  are  just  another  amusement  for  the  journalists 
and  soldiers  at  home.  Mephistopheles,  who  is  as 
relentless  as  he  is  artful,  laughs  his  harsh  laugh.  Bah  ! 
let  the  pedants  bring  home  their  lost  German  brothers, 
with  hoch-Teutsch  lays,  and  the  wiseacres  discuss 
the  defensive  powers  of  the  new  German  frontier ; 
are  the  real  chiefs  of  Prussia  the  men  to  play  these 
academic  pranks,  or  fight  for  what  they  have  got  fifty 
times  over  ?  Their  real  end  is  a  very  plain  one — the 
annihilation  of  France  as  an  independent  Power. 

Jugglery  about  language-boundaries  and  strategic 
frontiers  (in  its  defensive  sense)  will  soon  be  swept 
aside,  and  the  real  purpose  of  Prussian  policy  will  soon 
be  disclosed — such  a  settlement  as  will  leave  France 
prostrate  before  Germany.  Bismarck  swore  to  drive 
Austria  out  of  Germany.  He  has  done  it,  and  she 
clings  still  struggling  to  its  borders.  Bismarck  and 
his  captains  have  sworn,  too,  to  drive  France 
(practically)  out  of  Europe.  And,  if  they  have  their 
will,  they  will  not  rest  till  they  have  done  it.  That 
is  what  the  language-boundary  and  the  Vosges  line, 
in  sober  truth,  comes  to  at  last  ;  and  what  is  to 
prevent  them  from  insisting  on  it  ?  The  heads  of 
the  military  caste  in  Prussia  feel  towards  France  what 
the  Roman  aristocracy  felt  towards  Carthage.  Delenda 
est  Carthago  is  their  policy,  and  old  Bliicher  was  their 
Cato.  The  pedants  may  go  on  maundering  most  beauti- 
fully about  Teutonic  civilisation  ;  but  the  caste  will 
pursue  their  end  as  coolly  as  if  the  said  pedants  were 
actual,  as  well  as  metaphorical,  bookworms. 


THE  DUTY  OF  ENGLAND  49 

The  most  dreadful  part  of  all  this  is  that  peace, 
even  on  any  terms  now  demanded  by  Germany,  is 
not  a  peace,  but  a  truce.  We  have  it  on  the  best 
possible  authority,  that  of  Count  Bismarck.  In  his 
cynical  frankness,  he  told  us  that  he  knew  that 
France  would  renew  the  conflict,  and  he  only  wanted 
a  position  of  superiority  to  meet  it.  The  truth  is 
that  it  suits  neither  the  welfare  nor  the  policy  of 
Prussia  to  complete  the  destruction  of  France  at 
once.  Place  her  in  a  situation  of  overwhelming 
mastery,  and  she  would  prefer  to  take  her  own  time. 
Prussia  did  not  swallow  Denmark  at  one  mouthful, 
nor  drive  Austria  from  Germany  entirely  in  the  seven 
weeks'  war.  But  she  has  planted  herself  in  such  a 
position  that  she  can  deal  with  Denmark  or  deal  with 
Austria  much  as  she  pleases ;  and  she  is  assuredly 
about  to  do  so.  With  such  a  settlement  as  Prussia 
exacts  from  France,  she  can  begin  again,  and  finish 
her  task  whenever  she  pleases.  There  was  a  first,  a 
second,  and  a  third  partition  of  Poland,  arranged  at 
convenient  intervals,  without  too  exhausting  efforts. 
And  there  was  a  first,  and  a  second,  and  a  third  Punic 
war.  As  Rome  dealt  with  Carthage,  as  Prussia  dealt 
with  Poland,  and  as  she  has  since  dealt  with  Austria, 
so  will  Count  Bismarck  deal  with  France.  It  might 
be  too  hard  a  task,  Europe  might  be  alarmed,  if  all 
were  done  at  a  blow.  But,  once  place  Prussia  upon 
the  prostrate  body  of  disarmed  France,  and  the  rest  is 
a  question  of  time.  No  one  can  imagine,  even  in  the 
most  maudlin  hour  of  optimism,  that  France  can  long 
endure  such  a  lot.  Her  two  millions  of  oppressed 
citizens,  her  sense  of  helplessness,  and  the  intolerable 
weight  of  humiliation,  will  goad  her  in  some  evil 
hour  to  a  fresh  desperate  effort.  She  will  rush  to 
arms  again  like  the  Poles,  or  the  Carthaginians, 
without  a  chance,  and  almost  without  a  hope  ;  and 


50  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

with  a  like  result.  A  nation  of  forty  millions  of  men 
are  not  thrust  from  their  ancient  place  in  the  world 
by  one  war,  however  crushing  ;  nor  are  races  nowa- 
days partitioned  and  annexed  in  a  single  campaign, 
however  triumphant.  The  seizure  of  Silesia  was  a 
splendid  feat  of  arms,  and  Austria  was  crushed  for  the 
time.  But  even  in  that  age  Frederick  well  knew  that 
it  was  but  a  truce,  to  be  followed  as  certainly  as  night 
follows  day  by  the  Seven  Years'  War.  And  France 
is  more  than  Austria,  as  Alsace  and  Lorraine  are 
more  than  Silesia.  And  so  Frederick's  successor  tells 
Europe,  with  the  harsh  laugh,  what,  indeed,  we 
know,  and  hear  with  a  shudder,  that  even  this 
horrible  war  is  but  the  first  act  j  and  when  he  makes 
peace  it  will  be  nothing  but  a  truce.1 

The  prospect,  then,  which  the  statesmen  of  Europe 
have  before  them  is  this  : — This  fearful  war  is  but 
the  beginning  of  an  epoch  of  war  ;  it  is,  in  fact,  but 
a  first  campaign.  A  new  Polish  question,  a  new 
Venetian  subject-province,  is  established  on  far  larger 
proportions,  and  in  the  centre  of  Europe.  The  popu- 
lation to  be  torn  from  France  is  even  more  patriotic 
and  more  warlike  than  are  either  Venetians  or  Poles. 
And  certainly  France  is  stronger  than  Austria,  and 
occupies  a  more  central  position.  But  this  is  not 
merely  a  question  of  subjecting  a  province  to  foreign 
rule  ;  it  is  exposing  the  nation  from  which  it  is  torn 
to  permanent  helplessness.  It  is  easy  to  say  that 
Austria  gave  up  Venetia,  the  kingdom  of  the  Nether- 
lands gave  up  Belgium,  Italy  ceded  Savoy,  and  Den- 
mark Schleswig-Holstein.  These  examples  in  no 
case  apply.  In  all  of  them  the  ceded  provinces  were 

1  We  all  know  now  how  this  danger  was  averted — or  perhaps  only 
arrested — by  the  marvellous  recovery  of  France,  and  largely  by  the 
interposition  of  Russia.  We  know  how  a  renewal  of  the  war  in  1875 
was  prevented  by  the  act  of  the  Czar  and  Queen  Victoria.  I  wish  I 
could  think  the  danger  now  passed  (1908). 


THE  DUTY  OF  ENGLAND  51 

not  a  source  of  strength,  but  of  weakness.  They  lay 
outside  the  true  area  of  the  nation  which  ceded  them, 
and  belonged  by  many  ties  to  the  nation  that  received 
them.  In  the  case  of  Alsace  and  Lorraine,  all  these 
circumstances  are  reversed.  They  form  an  integral 
part  of  France,  socially,  economically,  and  geographic- 
ally j  in  every  sense  except  in  some  wretched  anti- 
quarian pretence  that  could  be  found  in  any  case. 
They  can  only  be  torn  from  France  by  the  sword, 
and  retained  by  oppression.  And  to  tear  them  from 
France  is  to  expose  her  to  standing  helplessness.  The 
true  parallel  to  the  case  is  simply  this : — What  would 
England  be  if  Hampshire  and  Sussex  were  annexed  to 
a  foreign  country,  whose  armies  were  posted  in  a  net- 
work of  arsenals  and  strongholds  along  their  entire 
sea-coast. 

We  hear  it  thoughtlessly  said  : — "  Well,  other 
nations  have  ceded  provinces,  and  lost  territory ; 
why  is  it  so  terrible  for  France  to  do  the  like,  or 
for  Frenchmen  to  change  their  nationality  ? "  It  is 
sufficient  to  say  that  in  every  case  in  this  nineteenth 
century  in  which  provinces  have  been  ceded,  with  the 
exception  of  Nice  (which  is  yet  a  standing  menace 
to  Europe),  it  has  been  done  in  the  name  of  nation- 
ality, and  not  in  defiance  of  it.  Colonies,  alienated 
provinces,  and  the  like,  have  been  ceded  ;  but  in  no 
single  case  has  a  vital  and  integral  part  of  a  nation, 
and  one  of  its  most  intensely  national  centres,  been 
cut  out  of  its  very  trunk.  For  deliberate  violation  of 
national  right  this  case  stands,  therefore,  alone  in  the 
history  of  the  nineteenth  century,  or  paralleled  only 
in  the  case  of  Poland.  It  is  not  the  cession  of  a 
province,  but  the  dismemberment  of  a  nation.  It  is 
annexation  on  a  scale  and  of  a  character  unexampled 
in  more  modern  times.  To  find  its  parallel  we  must 
go  back  to  other  centuries.  . 


52  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Be  it  observed  that  the  sentiment  of  nationality 
is  the  birth  of  recent  times  ;  sprung,  in  fact,  from 
the  Revolution.  In  the  old  days  of  dynastic  wars 
nations  in  our  sense  hardly  existed,  or  existed  only 
in  England  and  France.  The  principal  kingdoms 
consisted  of  bundles  of  duchies,  fiefs,  and  princi- 
palities, with  little  sense  of  national  coherence.  To 
transfer  them  from  one  sovereign  to  another  may 
have  weakened  the  power  of  the  ruler,  yet  it  was 
but  a  small  shock  to  the  feelings  of  the  population 
transferred,  and  hardly  any  to  the  other  lieges  of  the 
sovereign  to  whom  they  ceased  to  belong.  Cession 
of  provinces,  as  the  result  of  war,  was  then  a  dynastic 
and  feudal  question,  and  may  have  had  some  reason  ; 
for  national  rights  hardly  existed.  One  German 
savant,  in  that  spirit  of  grotesque  chicanery  which 
this  war  has  developed  in  that  ingenious  body,  has 
told  us  that  it  is  quite  immoral  to  end  a  war  without 
cession  of  territory.  Others  have  deluged  us  from 
their  note-books  with  instances  from  the  history  of 
the  House  of  Capet  or  the  House  of  Hapsburg. 
Antiquarian  rubbish  !  The  intense  spirit  of  nation- 
ality has  revolutionised  these  matters  entirely.  It  is 
but  of  recent  birth,  but  it  is  now  one  of  the  prime 
movers  of  the  European  system.  Guai  a  chi  la  tocca. 
Barbarossa  may  indeed  awake,  but  if  he  venture  to 
recast  Europe  with  the  mediaeval  notions  with  which 
he  went  down  into  his  tomb,  more  especially  if  he 
attempt  it  in  France,  democratised  and  nationalised, 
and  in  the  enthusiasm  of  a  new  Republican  spirit, 
this  weird  phantom  of  a  dead  past  will  be  plunging 
the  nations  of  our  time  into  a  new  era  of  revolution 
and  war. 

A  very  eminent  historian  has  lately  put  forward 
a  defence  for  this  and  other  acts  of  the  Prussian 
monarchy,  by  comparing  it  with  what  was  done  by 


THE  DUTY  OF  ENGLAND  53 

Plantagenet  or  Tudor  kings  in  England,  and  by  the 
House  of  Capet  in  France.  One  would  think  it  was 
only  necessary  to  be  an  historian,  to  set  aside  the 
principles  on  which  modern  nations  depend  for  their 
existence.  Why  the  very  charge  against  the  Prussian 
dynasty  and  its  advisers  is,  that  they  are  carrying  into 
modern  policy  those  violent  and  unjust  practices  of 
old  times,  which  it  is  the  function  of  modern  civilisa- 
tion to  repudiate  and  to  repress.  They  are  simply 
Tudors  and  Capets  in  the  nineteenth  century  ;  and 
that  is  what  the  nineteenth  century  will  never  endure. 
The  attempt  to  repeat  the  process  by  which  dynasties 
of  old  formed  nations  is  the  worst  of  all  offences  now 
against  the  rights  and  peace  of  nations.  It  is  precisely 
because  the  Prussian  monarch  belongs  to  an  era  and  a 
caste  which  has  learnt  nothing  and  forgotten  nothing, 
that  he  is  outraging  the  conscience  of  modern  Europe, 
and  perpetrating  a  wrong  against  nations,  more  fatal 
than  any  other  since  the  revolutionary  wars,  and  against 
which  the  modern  world  must  remain  in  permanent 
insurrection. 

Let  us  now  consider  the  position  of  England  at  the 
close  of  this  war.  France,  from  the  necessity  of  the 
case,  will  be  so  much  exhausted  and  humiliated,  that 
independent  action  in  Europe  would  be  in  any  case 
impossible  to  her.  But  that  she  is  feeble  will  be  the 
least  part  of  the  case.  She  will  be  so  completely  at 
the  mercy  of  Germany,  that  for  the  present  she  must 
cease  to  count  as  one  of  the  Great  Powers.  When 
diplomacy  has  finished  the  work  of  war,  she  will  not 
dare  to  profess  a  policy  contrary  to  that  of  Prussia. 
She  will  not  be  in  the  position  of  Russia  at  the  close 
of  the  Crimean  war,  exhausted,  but  powerful  and 
independent.  She  will  be  like  Poland  after  the  first 
partition,  or  like  Piedmont  after  Novara,  at  the  mercy 
of  an  enemy  who  can  march  at  any  moment  on  her 


54  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

defenceless  capital.  She  must,  therefore,  for  any 
practical  purpose  retire  from  the  councils  of  Europe, 
or  enter  them,  as  now,  for  the  purpose  only  of  making 
her  indignation  heard,  of  fomenting  discord,  or  of 
grasping  at  any  ally  at  almost  any  price.1 

The  problem  that  English  statesmen  have  to  face  is, 
how  to  maintain  our  position  in  Europe  when  France 
has  ceased  to  be  an  element  in  the  question.  Let 
them  look  back  for  one  or  two  generations,  and  weigh 
the  importance  of  those  interests  in  which  England 
and  France  were  as  one.  Ever  since  the  days  of  the 
Holy  Alliance,  and  the  recovery  from  the  great  spasm 
of  the  Revolutionary  war,  no  fact  in  the  history  of 
Europe  has  been  more  marked  than  the  growing 
tendency  towards  union  in  the  policy  of  France  and 
England.  In  spite  of  dynastic  or  ministerial  intrigues, 
gradually  for  forty  years  it  has  been  growing  more 
clear  that  in  France  and  in  England  the  weight  of  the 
popular  feeling  marched  onwards  in  parallel  lines,  and 
that  France  and  England  stood  out  as  the  guarantees 
in  the  long  run  for  progress  and  for  right.  England 
and  France  were  felt  by  all  to  be  great  powers,  second 
to  none  in  material  strength  ;  the  one  supposed  to  be 
supreme  by  sea  and  the  other  by  land,  whilst  they 
were  the  only  states  in  Europe  where  the  liberal 
feeling  of  the  nation  had  strength  to  prevent  their 
respective  Governments  from  long  continuing  on  the 
wrong  side. 

During  the  last  generation  there  have  been  four 
great  questions  of  European  importance.  In  all  or 
these  France  and  England,  in  the  main,  had  a  common 
purpose.  In  the  question  of  Turkey  and  the  East, 

1  This  imminent  danger  was  averted,  first,  by  the  extraordinary  power 
of  recuperation  by  France,  a  power  which  astonished  and  alarmed  Bismarck, 
and  next,  by  the  strange  alliance  with  Russia — even  less  to  be  foreseen — 
an  alliance  which  had  the  tacit  approval  of  England  (1908). 


THE  DUTY  OF  ENGLAND  55 

disfigured  as  their  action  was  by  private  jealousies, 
they  at  least  concurred  in  this :  both  England  and 
France  were  opposed  to  the  absorption  of  Turkey  in 
the  Muscovite  empire,  and  both  favoured  the  status 
quo  in  the  East  as  the  least  disturbing  issue  possible. 
In  the  key  of  the  English  policy,  the  French  on  the 
whole  agreed — that  the  Eastern  Mediterranean  should 
not  become  the  prey  either  of  anarchy  or  of  the  Czar. 
During  the  Crimean  war  that  alliance  was  deepened 
and  confirmed  ;  and  since  the  taking  of  Sebastopol 
there  has  grown  up  a  tacit  acknowledgment,  too  often 
not  justified  by  facts,  that  in  the  long  run  England 
and  France  were  the  representatives  of  the  cause  of 
national  independence,  in  the  Mediterranean  as  well 
as  in  the  Baltic. 

The  case  of  Poland  came  next.  And  to  whom  did 
Poland  look  in  spite  of  repeated  disappointment — to 
whom  could  she  look — but  to  England  and  to  France  ? 
There  again  the  policy  of  our  two  nations,  emphatic- 
ally of  both  peoples,  and  mainly  of  both  Governments, 
has  worked  together.  And  though  on  no  single 
occasion  has  the  Government  of  both  agreed  on  any 
common  plan  of  active  intervention,  their  assistance 
has  not  been  wholly  in  vain  ;  and  their  moral  support 
has  enabled  the  Poles  to  maintain  their  national 
traditions  under  all  the  tyranny  of  the  Eastern 
despotisms. 

Throughout  the  whole  of  this  period  there  existed 
the  Italian  question  ;  and  here  again,  in  spite  of  the 
insincere  policy  of  Napoleon,  the  French  and  the 
English  people  heartily  concurred.  With  the  ruler  of 
France,  and  sections  of  Frenchmen,  selfish  interests 
held  the  foremost  place  ;  but  no  one  can  doubt  that  it 
was  by  the  persistent  support  which  the  French  and  the 
English  nation  gave  to  the  principles  of  national  right, 
that  Italy  has  at  length  regained  her  independence. 


56  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Then  came  the  Danish  war,  the  first  beginning  of 
that  career  of  aggression  which  is  now  triumphing 
in  France.  Here  again  the  French  people  and  the 
English  were  entirely  as  one.  And  though  the 
French  ministry,  but  lately  rebuffed  on  the  Polish 
question,  declined  (as  we  now  know)  to  join  the  English 
in  active  operations,  the  mere  fact  of  a  proposal  of  the 
kind  having  passed  between  them,  is  a  proof  how 
closely  the  two  countries  felt  the  cause  of  independence 
to  be  violated  by  the  attempt  to  partition  Denmark, 
and  how  much  their  joint  support  contributed  to  save 
her  from  utter  extinction. 

In  the  East  the  fleets  and  armies  of  France  and 
England  have  acted  even  more  directly  in  concert. 
But  I  abstain  from  making  any  use  of  the  arguments 
to  be  found  in  the  support  which  England  has 
received  from  France  in  Asia.  In  neither  case  do  I 
believe  the  interference  to  have  been  for  the  good  of 
civilisation,  though  perhaps  it  was  rendered  less  in- 
jurious to  it  by  the  presence  of  two  rival  nations  in 
concert.  I  freely  admit  that  there  have  been  many 
questions  in  which  the  French  nation  has  been 
opposed. to  the  English,  and  still  more  frequently  their 
Government  to  ours.  It  is  sufficient  to  point  out 
that  in  the  four  principal  questions  which  have  deeply 
stirred  Europe  within  this  generation,  the  French 
nation  had  joint  interests  and  sympathies  with  our 
own,  and  were  actuated  by  the  same  principles  to 
follow  a  common  policy. 

Even  when,  as  is  too  true,  the  wretched  Govern- 
ment of  Napoleon,  and  at  times  the  French  people, 
engaged  in  or  tended  towards  a  course  fatal  to  pro- 
gress and  peace,  and  hostile  to  our  common  traditions, 
the  English  policy  and  public  opinion  have  been  able 
to  modify  and  control  those  of  France  by  virtue  of  the 
sense  of  our  many  common  interests.  In  the  Italian 


THE  DUTY  OF  ENGLAND  57 

question,  in  the  American  civil  war,  in  the  Danubian 
questions,  in  the  Mexican  interference,  and  even  in 
the  Luxemburg  difficulty  in  1867,  where  the  miser- 
able ambition  of  the  Imperial  dynasty  was  embarked 
on  a  retrograde  course,  the  moral  strength  of  England 
has  exercised  a  most  salutary  control,  and  gained  an 
ultimate  ascendency  for  right,  by  virtue  of  its  being 
felt  by  the  French  people  to  represent  the  voice  of  an 
honest  and  genuine  friend.  Looking  at  it  broadly,  as 
national  policy  alone  can  be  looked  at,  and  seeking 
only  for  what  is  fundamental,  a  fair  mind  will  allow 
that  the  co-operation  of  France  with  England  has 
been  a  solid  and  a  great  fact ;  that  the  alliance  has 
been  on  the  whole  a  real  thing,  and  an  alliance  in  the 
main  for  good. 

It  is  all  over  now  ;  and  where  are  we  to  find  its 
like  ?  On  all  these  four  typical  questions  of  European 
policy,  whilst  France  at  heart  was  with  us  and  with 
the  right,  Prussia,  the  new  mistress  of  Europe,  was 
against  us  and  with  the  wrong.  In  the  Crimean  war 
she  threw  her  undisguised  sympathies  and  her  secret 
influence  on  the  side  of  Muscovite  aggression.  In  the 
Polish  question  she  played  into  the  hands  of  the 
oppressors,  for  is  she  not  one  of  the  standing  oppressors 
herself?  In  the  Italian  question  she  joined  her  cause 
with  Austria,  and  declared  for  the  permanent  en- 
slavement of  Italy  by  German  bayonets.  Nay, 
more,  in  1859,  sne  declared  Venetia  a  strategic 
question  for  Germany,  though  for  her  own  ends,  in 
1866,  she  found  means  to  surrender  it.  Of  the 
Danish  question  it  is  needless  to  speak,  for  she 
was  the  author  and  head  of  that  wanton  spoliation. 
On  all  these  great  questions,  in  which  England  stood 
forth  with  France  as  the  guardian  of  right  and 
respect  for  nations,  she  will  find  herself  now  face  to 
face  with  that  gigantic  Despotism  which  is  the  very 


58   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

embodiment  of  the  wrong ;  and  she  will  find  herself 
before  that  Power — alone.1 

Condemn,  as  we  may,  the  national  faults  of  France, 
denounce,  as  we  please,  their  pretension  to  supremacy 
in  Europe  (a  pretension  exactly  equivalent  to  that 
which  England  makes  to  maritime  supremacy),  we 
must  still  feel  that  in  no  other  nation  does  there  exist 
a  public  opinion  so  akin  to  our  own,  and  at  the  same 
time  so  completely  in  the  ascendant.  The  heart  of 
the  great  French  nation  beats  with  that  of  our  own, 
and  we  feel  its  pulsations  in  every  workshop  and  every 
cottage  of  the  land.  The  true  modern  life  breathes 
in  both  of  us  equally  :  the  same  generous  sympathies, 
the  same  faith  in  progress,  the  like  yearning  for  a 
social  regeneration  of  the  West.  And  France,  we  feel, 
has  been  truly  passed  through  the  Revolution  :  the 
social  rule  of  caste,  the  dead-weight  of  feudal  institu- 
tions, the  organised  reaction,  has  passed  away  from 
them,  far  more  than  from  us,  and  certainly  far  more 
than  from  any  other  people  in  Europe.  Anarchy  and 
tyranny  in  turn  afflict  them  for  a  season ;  but  we 
know  that  in  France  the  reign  of  neither  can  be  long. 
We  feel  that  in  spite  of  repeated  failures  and  errors, 
and  the  misdeeds  of  rulers,  there  still  lives  the  great 
French  people,  animated  by  noble  ideas,  the  slaves  of 
no  caste  and  of  no  system,  who  in  the  long  run  are 
always,  and  are  worthy  to  be,  the  masters  of  the 
destinies  of  France. 

It  is  so  now,  and  it  has  been  so  in  the  past.  The 
true  history  of  France,  seen  in  the  light  of  a  broad 
survey  of  the  annals  of  mankind,  is  the  history  of  a 
nation  which  has  been  in  the  van  of  progress.  She 
who  led  Europe  in  the  Crusades  to  resist  the  aggression 

1  Happily,  in  the  present  reign  things  are  changed.  The  fears  of 
1871  are  modified — not  extinct — in  1908.  The  doubtful  hopes  of  1871 
are  almost  now  real  facts  (1908). 


THE  DUTY  OF  ENGLAND  59 

of  the  Saracen  ;  she  who  built  up  the  great  central 
monarchy  in  Europe  out  of  feudal  chaos,  and  inaugur- 
ated the  institutions  of  modern  government  out  of  the 
antique  armoury  of  chivalry  ;  she  who  kept  at  bay  the 
bigotry  and  tyranny  which  once  menaced  Europe  from 
Hapsburg  ambition,  rose  out  of  a  century  and  a  half  of 
restless  thought  and  evil  policy  into  the  Revolution, 
which,  with  all  its  crimes,  was  the  new  birth  of 
modern  society.  In  the  true  philosophy  of  history,  it 
is  France  who  (often  backsliding,  and  often  the  enemy 
of  right)  has  been  in  the  main  foremost  in  the  cause 
of  civilisation.  Let  us  leave  it  to  half-crazy  pedants  to 
represent  her  as  the  evil  destiny  of  nations.  Men  who 
have  grown  purblind  and  anti-social  whilst  working 
deep  down  in  the  stifling  mines  of  German  records, 
see  the  good  spirit  of  mankind  in  the  wild  and  valorous 
doings  of  panoplied  Rittmeisters  ;  of  the  Grafs  and 
Kaisers  who  prolonged  the  Middle  Ages  down  into 
the  sixteenth  or  the  seventeenth  century.  The  good 
sense  of  mankind  has  long  agreed  that  the  great 
French  nation  holds  a  precious  part  in  the  history  of 
civilisation  j  a  part  which  she  held  of  old,  and  holds 
still :  her  place  no  other  can  supply.1 

We  need  not  thereby  deny  the  great  and  noble 
qualities  of  other  races  in  Europe,  much  less  of  the 
massive  and  energetic  German  people.  But  the  good 
sense  of  Englishmen  is  agreed  that  nowhere  (for 
America  distinctly  stands  aloof  from  Continental 
questions)  do  they  find,  as  they  do  in  the  French,  a 
people  combining  the  same  sympathies  and  interests  as 
their  own,  with  so  high  a  power  of  giving  them  effect. 
How  can  the  new  German  Empire  supply  that  place  ? 
How  can  the  free  and  peaceful  policy  of  England  look 

1  It  has  needed  more  than  thirty  years  for  English  statesmen 
thoroughly  to  realise  this.  Events  in  the  late  decade  have  forced  it  on 
them  (1908). 


60   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

for  its  right  hand  to  the  Prussian  dynasty  and  its 
military  chiefs  ?  The  Hohenzollern  monarchy  has 
traditions  more  unchanged  and  rooted  than  any  house 
in  Europe.  They  are  traditions  of  national  aggrandise- 
ment, of  military  power,  of  royal  prerogative,  and 
divine  right.  It  represents,  and  is  proud  of  repre- 
senting, the  despotic,  warlike,  retrograde  forces  of 
Europe.  The  key  of  its  policy  has  been  common 
cause  with  Russia.  Its  aim  has  been  to  broaden  the 
foundations  of  its  own  ascendency.  Not  a  single  liberal 
movement  in  Europe  has  ever  found  in  it  a  friend ; 
not  one  service  to  civilisation  or  to  peace  can  it  boast. 
Its  great  pride  has  been  that,  alone  of  the  five  great 
Powers,  it  has  upheld  unbending  the  old  royalty  and 
chivalry  as  it  existed  before  the  Revolution.  Such  is 
the  Power  with  which  the  Parliamentary  Ministers  of 
this  free  English  nation  are  to  form  their  future 
alliances,  or  to  whose  will  they  are  to  bow  in  sub- 
mission. The  scared  Ministers  of  "  happy  England  " 
do  not  lift  up  the  eyes  to  dream  of  an  alliance  with  the 
successor  of  Barbarossa ;  but  they  are  offering  him 
their  homage  at  Versailles,  as  if  the  House  of  Guelf 
were  one  of  the  mediatised  princes.1 

Optimists,  with  a  tincture  of  German  literature, 
are  fond  of  assuring  us  that  however  little  hope  civilisa- 
tion can  find  in  the  Hohenzollern  dynasty,  the  great 
German  people  will  set  all  right  in  their  own  good 
time.  Far  be  it  from  us  to  deny  the  admirable 
qualities  of  the  German  people,  more  especially  their 
high  cultivation  of  all  sorts,  and  their  splendid  in- 
tellectual gifts.  Professors,  with  a  nal've  enthusiasm, 
rehearse  the  tale  of  Teutonic  literature,  science,  and 
art ;  grow  maudlin  over  the  domestic  virtues  of  the 
German  home ;  and  celebrate  it  as  the  nursery  of 
the  best  of  fathers  and  the  truest  of  friends.  Well 

1  We  sing  a  very  different  song  to-day  (1908). 


THE  DUTY  OF  ENGLAND  61 

and  good  ;  but  the  question  is  what  has  the  Prussian 
dynasty  done  for  the  peace  of  Europe  ?  A  race  may 
have  the  highest  intellectual  and  personal  gifts,  and 
yet  not  as  a  nation  have  consciously  assumed  any 
great  international  function.  After  all,  the  value  of 
a  nation  in  the  common  councils  depends  on  its  social 
forces,  on  its  consciousness  of  public  duties,  rather 
than  on  its  intellectual  brilliancy.  In  their  later  ages 
the  Greeks,  with  their  matchless  mental  gifts,  were  of 
almost  no  account  as  a  nation  ;  whilst  the  Romans,  in 
cultivation  far  their  inferiors,  were  foremost  by  the 
ascendency  of  their  national  genius.  The  real  strength 
of  a  nation,  especially  in  these  days,  consists  not  in  its 
achievements  in  science  or  art,  but  in  the  degree  to 
which  its  national  will  can  command  the  sympathies 
and  give  shape  to  the  wants  of  the  age.  This  is  now 
the  only  claim  which  a  nation  can  possess  to  the 
supremacy  amongst  nations.  And  it  is  this  which 
Germany  is  yet  too  inorganic,  too  much  encumbered 
with  the  debris  of  the  past,  and  too  little  conscious  of 
national  duty,  reasonably  to*  assert. 

Worthy  and  enlightened  souls  as  the  good  German 
burghers  are  in  many  relations  of  life,  socially  and 
politically  they  are  what  we  in  the  West  of  Europe, 
or  what  Americans,  call,  decidedly  backward.  They 
have  a  wonderful  army,  a  consummate  administration, 
a  high-pressure  educational  machinery,  an  omniscient 
press,  and  a  number  of  other  surprising  social  produc- 
tions, but,  with  all  that,  they  have  not  the  true 
political  genius.  They  still  live  under  a  grotesque 
medley  of  antiquated  princelets,  who  are  not,  like  our 
monarchy  and  aristocracy,  modernised  into  the  mere 
heads  of  society,  but  are  living  remnants  of  feudal 
chieftainship.  The  rule  of  these  princes  still  rests  on 
divine  right,  on  vassal  devotion,  and  military  subordina- 
tion. It  is  buttressed  round  by  the  serried  ranks  of  a 


62   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

social  hierarchy,  also  feudal  in  its  pretensions  and  in 
its  strength,  not  like  our  own,  modernised  and  trans- 
formed to  the  uses  of  a  democratic  society,  but  standing 
in  all  the  naked  antiquity  of  its  preposterous  pride. 
Society,  therefore,  in  Germany,  is  heavily  oppressed 
by  the  superincumbent  mass  of  strata  upon  strata  of 
old-world  orders  and  venerable  institutions,  habits,  and 
ideas,  of  which  a  great  free  and  progressive  people, 
as  we  here  understand  it,  would  never  endure  the 
weight. 

There  is,  therefore,  in  Prussia  no  true  public  opinion. 
Politics  are  discussed  with  unfathomable  profundity, 
and  the  press  peers  into  public  affairs  with  well-regulated 
curiosity  ;  but  for  true  influence  on  the  policy  of 
Prussia  the  people  of  Prussia  count  nothing.  An 
eminent  encomiast  of  the  German  empire  has  but 
recently  acknowledged  that,  great  as  the  proportions 
of  the  new  edifice"  will  prove,  it  will  still  want  some 
of  the  modern  improvements  of  the  State  fabric.  It 
will  not  be  (of  course)  a  constitutional  affair,  it  is  not 
intended  to  be  a  parliamentary  government,  there  is 
no  idea  of  having  ministerial  responsibility,  or  of 
public  opinion  controlling  the  army  or  the  finances 
of  the  State.  For  my  part  I  am  not  enamoured  of 
our  present  form  of  parliamentary  government  j  but  I 
do  maintain  that  a  government  which  is  in  no  sense 
to  be  the  organ  of  public  opinion,  is  not  a  free  and 
not  a  progressive  government.  The  Prussian  regime 
is  not  one  which  has  passed  beyond  a  parliamentary 
system,  but  one  which  has  never  reached  it.  It  looks 
upon  the  voice  of  the  nation  as  Tudors  or  Stuarts 
looked  at  it,  as  something  which  may  offer  respectful 
comments,  but  is  never  to  exercise  control.  This  is 
the  ideal  of  government  which  accords  with  every 
tradition  of  the  house  of  Hohenzollern,  which  is  main- 
tained by  the  yet  unshaken  strength  of  a  social  system 


THE  DUTY  OF  ENGLAND  63 

pledged  to  defend  it  by  pride  as  much  as  by  interest, 
which  the  middle-class  Prussian  accepts  by  every  habit 
of  his  nature,  and  worships  with  instinctive  idolatry. 
It  will  be  a  revolution  only  that  can  shake  it. 

But  the  true  character  of  this  Hohenzollern  dynasty 
is  determined  by  that  "peculiar  institution  "  of  Prussia, 
the  Junker  class.  It  is  a  phenomenon  to  which  no 
parallel  exists  in  Europe,  a  genuine  aristocratic  military 
caste.  It  is  not  like  our  own  aristocracy,  rich,  peace- 
ful, and  half-bourgeois.  It  is  not  like  the  French 
imperial  army,  a  mere  staff  of  officers,  with  no  local 
or  social  influence.  It  is  not  like  the  Spanish  order 
of  Grandees,  an  effete  body  of  incapables.  It  is  an 
order  of  men  knit  together  by  all  the  ties  of  family 
pride  and  interest ;  with  an  historic  social  influence  ; 
with  a  high  education,  and  a  strong  nature  of  a  special 
sort ;  rich  enough  to  have  local  power  both  in  town 
and  country ;  and  yet  so  poor  as  to  depend  for  exist- 
ence on  the  throne  —  and  with  all  this,  devoted 
passionately,  necessarily,  to  war.  It  is  a  caste,  which 
an  aspiring  dynasty  has  moulded  out  of  the  Ritters 
and  Grafs  of  mediaeval  Germany.  The  Williams  and 
Fredericks,  with  their  strong  hand,  have  taken  the 
fierce  old  lanz-knecht  and  his  children,  given  him  a 
scanty  manor  and  a  soldier's  pension,  drilled  him  into 
the  best  soldier  in  the  world,  tutored  him  in  the 
absolute  science  of  destruction,  given  him  two  watch- 
words —  "  King  "  and  "  God  "  —  and  kept  him  for 
every  other  purpose  a  simple  mediaeval  knight.  He  is 
now  the  ideal  of  the  scientific  soldier,  always  a  gallant, 
often  a  cultivated  man,  but  in  this  industrial  and  pro- 
gressive age,  an  anachronism.  Scratch  the  Junker, 
and  you  will  find  the  Lanz  -  Knecht.  We  have 
nothing  to  compare  with  him,  though  he  reminds  one 
a  little  of  the  Rajpoot  caste  in  Oude,  or  the  Japanese 
Daimio  and  his  Ronins.  The  last  time  these  islands 


64  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

saw  his  like,  was  when  Charles  Edward  led  his  High- 
land chieftains  on  their  raid.  The  difference  is,  that 
the  Junker  is  a  social  and  political  power,  civilised  in 
all  the  material  sides  to  the  last  point  of  modern 
science.  Morally  and  socially,  in  all  that  we  look  for 
in  peace  and  progress,  he  is  as  abnormal  and  foreign 
an  element  as  if  Fergus  Mclvor  were  amongst  us  with 
his  claymore. 

It  was  the  fashion  (not  unnaturally)  to  treat  this 
order  as  of  small  political  account.  But  they  have 
now  thrown  up  their  man  of  genius,  they  are  the 
true  masters  of  the  situation,  and  they  have  embarked 
their  King  on  a  new  career,  in  which  he  will  be  unable 
to  stop.  Count  Bismarck  has  found  how  this  caste 
may  make  itself  a  necessity  for  the  nation,  how  it  can 
step  forward  as  the  right  arm  to  work  out  the  national 
dream,  and  in  the  name  of  Nationality  and  Peace  may 
found  a  new  military  supremacy.  He  has  done  with 
profounder  craft  what  Napoleon  did  at  the  close  of  last 
century,  and  has  debauched  the  spirit  of  patriotic 
defence  into  a  thirst  for  glory  and  domination.  Who 
thought  in  1792  that  the  acclaims  of  Frenchmen  for 
universal  philanthropy  (more  passionate  and  real  than 
those  of  German  eruditi  in  1870)  were  destined  to 
glide,  step  by  step,  into  the  sanguinary  vanity  of  the 
Napoleonic  wars  ?  At  every  move  in  the  game  of 
ambition,  the  self-love  of  the  people  and  the  degrada- 
tion of  the  army  grew  with  an  equal  growth.  Like 
Napoleon,  Bismarck  must  go  on,  feeding  an  Empire 
of  military  supremacy  by  fresh  pretensions. 

The  situation  is  so  unreal  that  it  must  be  sustained 
by  further  crimes.  The  Empire,  threatened  already 
by  the  people,  must  rest  on  the  vast  soldier  caste ;  to 
reward  and  stimulate  that  soldier  caste,  fresh  aliment 
must  be  found  for  its  soldier  pride.  Russia,  Austria, 
France,  must  some  day  look  askance,  even  if  our 


THE  DUTY  OF  ENGLAND  65 

merchants  still  smirk  before  the  new  Empire,  with  a 
tradesman's  bow.  To  maintain  an  attitude  founded 
upon  wrong,  fresh  wrongs  must  be  ventured.  The 
weight  of  the  new  Despotism,  threatened  from 
its  birth  both  at  home  and  abroad,  must  tell  on  the 
deluded  German  people.  And  to  repress  their  opposi- 
tion, their  national  vanity  must  be  fed  with  fresh 
stimulants,  or  their  efforts  swallowed  up  in  a  new 
convulsion.  Bismarck  plays  with  Fatherland  to  the 
German  burgher,  as  Napoleon  I.  played  the  Coalition 
to  the  bourgeois  of  France,  or  Napoleon  III.  the 
Spectre  Rouge.  As  to  the  chiefs  of  the  German 
army,  and  its  whole  officer  class,  war  is  their  profession, 
and  their  social  monopoly.  They  no  more  desire 
peace  than  the  lawyer  desires  to  close  courts  of  justice, 
or  the  Roman  patrician  desired  to  close  the  Temple  of 
Janus.  A  military  Empire  now  has  but  one  career  to 
run — that  of  Napoleon  I. — that  of  Napoleon  III. 
Those  States  who  take  the  sword  for  their  title,  must 
perish  by  the  sword. 

The  new  Empire  of  Germany  is  thus,  in  its  origin, 
a  menace  to  Europe.  The  house  of  Hohenzollern, 
with  its  traditions  of  aggrandisement,  with  its  con- 
summate bureaucratic  machinery,  and  its  bodyguard  of 
a  warlike  caste,  can  never  be  the  titular  chief  of  peace- 
ful industrial  German  kingdoms.  It  is  no  case  of 
chance  personal  despotism,  or  mushroom  revolutionary 
adventurer.  It  is  a  great  power,  whose  roots  go  deep 
into  every  pore  of  the  two  upper  classes  of  German 
society.  It  is  arbitrary,  military,  fanatical.  In  one 
word,  it  is  the  enemy  of  modern  progress.  Though 
not  representing  the  German  people,  it  has  debauched 
and  masters  the  German  people.  Six  months  of  this 
gigantic  war  have  turned  the  flower  of  the  German 
citizens  into  professional  troopers.  The  very  fact  that 
they  have  as  a  nation  submitted  to  the  military  yoke, 

F 


66   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  fact  that  every  German  is  a  soldier,  is  itself  a  proof 
of  a  lower  type  of  civilisation,  and  marks  them  as  a 
nation  capable  of  becoming  a  curse  to  their  neighbours. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  suppose  that  this  new  power 
has  any  distinct  vision  of  further  conquests,  or  uni- 
versal dominion.  It  is  quite  sufficient  calamity  to 
Europe  that  such  a  power  should  possess  paramount 
supremacy.  It  may  be  the  good  German  souls  are 
right,  and  that  neither  they  nor  the  Empire,  which  is 
another  thing,  mean  any  harm.  But  why  are  the 
nations  to  depend  for  existence  on  the  forbearance  of 
their  mighty  neighbour  ?  And  if  we  are  safe,  are  all 
the  smaller  states  safe  ?  The  one  thing  which  is  now 
the  dream  of  the  North  German  is  a  great  navy  and 
power  at  sea.1  To  this  end  the  very  friends  of  Prussia 
admit  that  Continental  Denmark  is  necessary  for  her. 
The  inevitable  result  of  such  a  career  as  that  of  Prussia 
is,  that  she  must  seek  to  be  the  mistress  of  the  Baltic. 
She  will  begin  by  coercing,  and  end  by  absorbing  all 
who  stand  in  her  way.  As  to  Holland,  every  step  in 
affairs  brings  her  nearer  and  nearer  to  the  inevitable  fate. 
And  England  will  yet  come  to  see  that  she  must  stand 
alone  to  defend  the  existence,  to  guarantee  the  inde- 
pendence of  those  industrious,  friendly  kingdoms  along 
the  northern  seas,  or  consent  to  see  them  made  the 
instruments  of  a  new  and  far  nearer  Russia. 

In  the  centre  and  South  of  Europe,  Prussia,  if  this 
war  close  with  her  undisputed  triumph,  can  arrange 
everything  at  her  own  good  pleasure.  The  question 
of  the  Danube,  the  very  existence  of  Turkey,2  hang 
upon  her  favour,  and  will  be  determined  by  her  in- 
terests. For  as  the  first-fruits  of  the  new  supremacy, 

1  This  forecast  of  1871  has  a  very  different  meaning  in  1908.  In 
1871  the  German  navy  was  a  quanthe  negligeable, 

3  The  Sultan  has  long  found  the  German  Empire  his  best — his  only 
friend.  Thus  secured,  he  has  a  free  hand  in  crime  (1908). 


THE  DUTY  OF  ENGLAND  67 

Austria,  who  at  first  was  calling  out  for  English 
support,  is  for  very  life  drawing  near  in  obsequious 
deference  to  the  conqueror.  Italy  may  at  any  moment 
be  ordered  to  restore  or  to  satisfy  the  Pope.  And 
Switzerland  finds  herself  surrounded  by  a  new  danger. 
With  a  power  so  tremendous,  and  an  ambition  so 
ruthless,  as  that  which  Prussia  has  exhibited,  every- 
thing is  possible,  and  every  nation  is  unsafe.  But  the 
matter  for  us  is  not  so  much  whether  Prussia  will 
overrun  Europe,  or  swallow  up  this  or  that  smaller 
nation.  All  that  is  for  the  future  ;  but  what  is  in  the 
present,  our  actual  calamity,  is  this  :  the  greatest  shock 
of  this  century  has  been  given  to  the  principle  of 
national  rights  ;  the  black  flag  of  conquest  has  been 
unfurled  by  a  dominant  power  ;  one  nation  has  gained 
a  supremacy  in  arms  which  puts  the  security  of  every 
other  at  her  sufferance,  and  that  a  nation  directed  by  a 
policy  against  which  every  free  people  is  in  permanent 
revolt. 

Such  is  the  result  which  an  English  Government 
has  watched  gathering  up  for  six  months,  now  with  an 
air  of  Pharisaical  neutrality,  now  with  a  flood  of  pulpit 
good  advice.  European  politics  form  a  world  in  which 
the  forces  are  tremendous.  To  cope  with  them  are 
needed  great  insight  and  resolute  natures,  and  not 
fluent  tongues.  Statesmen  need  something  to  deal 
with  them  more  solid  than  pretty  essays  j  they  can  be 
touched  only  by  deeds,  and  not  by  words.  No  nation 
can  stand  apart,  gaping  on  in  maudlin  hymns  to  its  own 
exceeding  good  fortune,  or  pouring  out  its  eloquent 
laments  over  the  naughtiness  of  its  neighbours.  If 
the  foundation  of  a  great  military  empire,  overshadow- 
ing all  Europe,  be  in  truth  a  good  thing,  let  us  make 
it  the  new  basis  of  our  foreign  policy,  and  not  crawl 
like  mere  courtiers  to  the  conqueror's  footstool.  But 
if  it  be  a  bad  thing,  and  a  danger  to  us  and  to  the 


68   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

common  peace,  by  all  the  traditions  of  the  British  race 
let  us  throw  our  whole  force  to  prevent  its  triumph. 
Act ;  for  act  you  must ;  to  stand  still  is  to  be  on  its 
side.  Act  with  your  moral  force,  if  you  please,  since 
we  are  told  that  England  has  no  physical  force  left ; 
act  even  with  your  moral  force,  for  that  may  yet  be 
something.  Have  a  policy,  declare  it,  and  act  on  it. 

It  is  impossible  to  be  morally  neutral.  If  you 
mean  well  to  the  conqueror,  stand  up  and  preach 
sermons  upon  peace  ;  for  that  is  to  truckle  to  the 
stronger.  If  you  do  not  see  his  triumph  with  delight, 
you  must  show  him  so  with  something  stronger  than 
affectionate  remonstrance  or  copy-book  exhortations 
to  keep  the  Ten  Commandments.  Nations  in  this 
wicked  world  are  seldom  amenable  to  moral  lectures, 
and  a  nation  flushed  with  glory  and  ambition  can  be 
touched  by  nothing  but  the  fear  of  retribution.  When 
England  stands  by,  and  sees,  without  moving,  the 
whole  face  of  Europe  transformed  and  a  new  principle 
enthroned  amongst  nations,  she  is  virtually  its  accom- 
plice. A  great  nation,  in  spite  of  itself,  must  play  a 
part.  It  cannot  stand  by,  like  a  field-preacher,  at  a 
street-fight,  crying  out  with  benevolent  imbecility — 
"My  friends,  keep  clear  of  those  wicked  men  ! 
Wicked  men,  shake  hands  and  be  friends  !  "  To 
offer  good  counsels  to  Prussia  is  to  become  her  play- 
thing, or  her  parasite.  You  might  as  well  throw 
tracts  and  hymn-books  at  a  tiger. 

"  What  can  we  do  ?  "  cries  that  cynical  No- Policy 
with  which  the  governing  classes  have  contrived  to 
gild  and  to  satisfy  the  gross  selfishness  of  the  trader. 
"What!"  sneers  the  organ  of  the  money -dealers, 
"are  we  for  the  balance  of  power  and  intervention  in 
this  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  ? "  If  to 
have  national  interests  and  duties,  and  to  act  for  the 
maintenance  of  those-  interests,  and  in  defence  of 


THE  DUTY  OF  ENGLAND  69 

rights,  if  this  be  intervention,  it  has  not  yet  ceased  to 
be  the  policy  of  this  country,  and  let  us  trust  it  never 
will.  England  has  continually  intervened  when  it 
seemed  to  be  her  interest  and  her  right.  She  inter- 
vened in  1854  to  protect  Turkey  from  absorption; 
she  is  intervening  at  this  moment  for  the  same  end  ; 
she  intervened  but  the  other  day  to  preserve  Belgium. 
She  intervened  persistently  and  effectively  against  the 
retrograde  oppression  of  the  old  Austrian  empire. 
Her  policy  in  Asia  is  one  perpetual  and  restless  inter- 
vention. As  to  the  balance  of  power,  if  the  pedantic 
and  jealous  adherence  to  the  status  quo  was  a  source  of 
danger  and  of  wrong,  which  the  good  sense  of  our  time 
has  rejected,  there  is  a  sense  in  which  it  is  an  invaluable 
safeguard  against  the  preponderance  of  power. 

It  is  true  still,  that  it  will  be  a  dark  day  for 
Europe  when  any  one  Power  shall  hold  the  rest  in  the 
hollow  of  its  mailed  hand.  If  it  was  a  menace  to 
Europe  when  the  House  of  Hapsburg  or  of  Capet 
threatened  to  absorb  half  Europe,  if  it  was  an  Euro- 
pean calamity  when  Napoleon  ruled  from  Berlin  to 
Madrid,  so  it  will  be  the  knell  of  peace  and  liberty 
when  the  triumphant  Empire  of  Germany  bestrides 
the  Continent  without  an  equal.  If  it  succeed  in 
doing  so  it  will  be  the  act  of  England,  who  stands  by, 
trading  and  sermonising,  selling  arms  but  using  none, 
"  bellum  cauponantes,  non  belligerantes,"  droning  out 
homilies  and  betraying  every  duty  of  a  nation.  It 
will  be  the  crowning  proof  of  the  degradation  of  those 
governing  orders  who  have  bought  power  by  subser- 
vience to  the  traders,  and  surrendered  the  traditions  of 
their  ancestors  ;  that  they  who  can  make  war  at  the 
bidding  of  a  knot  of  merchants,  and  call  Europe  into 
conference  for  some  supposed  commercial  interest, 
have  nothing  in  this,  the  greatest  revolution  in  the 
State  system  of  modern  Europe,  but  a  policy  of 


70   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

absolute  abnegation ;  a  policy  which  thoughtful 
politicians  know  to  be  suicidal,  and  the  mass  of  the 
people  feel  to  be  shameful ;  the  policy  which  the  new 
Emperor  of  the  West  told  them  with  a  gibe,  as  they 
came  bowing  to  his  court,  was  the  only  policy  that 
remained  for  them — the  policy  of  effacement. 

January  17,  1871. 


Ill 

FRANCE   AFTER   WAR 

(June  1874) 

The  following  Essay  was  written  in  May  1874,  and  was 
published  in  the  Fortnightly  Review  of  that  year 
(vol.  xv.~).  At  the  time  the  whole  of  the  milliards 
(£200,000,000)  had  been  paid  by  France,  and  her 
territory  evacuated  by  Germany.  A  fierce  struggle 
under  the  "  Marshalate "  was  being  carried  on  by  De 
Broglie  and  the  Bonapartists  against  the  Republicans,  led 
by  Thiers  and  Gambetta.  The  political  parties  and  the 
National  Assembly  were  torn  by  monarchist  and  imperialist 
intrigues,  and  the  existence  of  the  Republican  form  hung 
doubtfully  on  the  divisions  of  the  reactionary  sections.  In 
the  meantime  the  German  chiefs  were  contemplating  a 
fresh  invasion,  which  became  imminent  in  the  following 
year,  1875.  The  peril  of  the  Republic,  and  even  of 
France,  was  extreme  (1908). 

MANIFOLD  and  subtle  are  the  theories  propounded  to 
account  for  the  evils  which  have  fallen  upon  France. 
It  is  a  subject  to  exercise  our  powers  of  invention,  and 
to  gratify  our  sense  of  morality  ;  so  that  every  man 
has  an  explanation  of  his  own,  which  differs  with  his 
politics,  his  habits,  or  his  creed.  Democracy,  des- 
potism, Dumas,  pilgrimages,  Voltaire,  absinthe,  Malthus, 
or  bah-masques  are  the  theories  chiefly  in  favour.  Yet 


72   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

there  is,  one  would  think,  an  explanation  before  our 
eyes  quite  as  simple,  and  far  more  complete.  If  we 
miss  it,  it  is  only  because  it  is  too  familiar  to  us,  so 
manifest  that  we  are  apt  to  forget  its  presence — that 
it  towers  above  like  a  mountain,  whilst  we  are  staring 
at  the  foreground.  That  grand  cause  of  all  is  simply 
the  Revolution,  still  in  the  course  of  its  long  agony. 
Often  as  it  happens  that  we  cannot  see  the  wood  for 
the  trees,  it  was  never  more  so  than  when  things 
which  are  but  the  undergrowth  of  the  Revolution 
prevent  us  from  seeing  the  Revolution  itself. 

Rightly  to  judge  the  condition  of  France,  the  first 
thing  is  to  recognise  that  she  is  still  in  the  crisis  of 
organic  revolution.  It  is  too  late  to  moralise  or  com- 
plain over  this  obvious  fact.  We  might  as  well 
reproach  our  first  parents  with  the  Fall  of  man.  And 
it  is  idle  to  inveigh  against  evils  which  are  the 
inevitable  results  of  the  revolutionary  state,  when  we 
have  made  up  our  minds  that  the  revolution  itself 
must  be  accepted.  It  was  an  unlucky  piece  of 
hypercriticism  in  a  great  master  of  logic  when  he  said 
that  the  term  revolution  meant  nothing  definite  or 
real.  The  Revolution,  at  any  rate  in  France,  is  the 
most  real  fact  of  our  age.  The  Revolution  is  the 
change  from  the  feudal  to  the  industrial  phase  of 
society,  from  the  aristocratic  to  the  republican  form 
of  government,  from  the  Church  and  terrorism  to 
good  sense  and  humanity.  It  is  transforming  at 
once  ideas,  habits,  institutions,  nations,  and  societies. 
Under  it  the  national  sentiment  is  taking  a  new 
departure,  partly  widening  into  that  of  the  great 
community  of  the  people,  partly  intensifying  itself  in 
the  form  of  local  republicanism. 

Under  the  same  influence  the  struggle  of  the 
people  for  political  and  social  emancipation  makes 
everything  spasmodic  and  provisional.  When  we  see 


FRANCE  AFTER  WAR  73 

constitution  after  constitution  torn  to  pieces  in  France, 
it  is  simply  that  the  Revolution  has  left  the  great 
fight  of  classes  still  undecided.  If  anarchical  in- 
surrections are  succeeded  by  murderous  tyrannies,  it 
is  the  Revolution  raging  in  the  death-grapple  of  two 
types  of  society.  If  government  seems  paralysed  and 
dissolved  into  a  Babel  of  changing  impulses,  it  is 
simply  the  ebb  and  flow  of  the  revolutionary  battle. 
The  cross-purpose,  the  dead-lock,  the  ceaseless  repeti- 
tion, the  round-and-round  restlessness  of  politics  in 
France,  are  nothing  but  the  sway  of  parties  in  this 
secular  contest.  To  complain  of  it  is  as  idle  as  to 
complain  of  the  smoke  and  of  the  dead  and  dying  in 
a  battle.  There  stand  face  to  face  two  great  prin- 
ciples, which  all  modern  history  has  been  preparing  ; 
it  is  a  struggle  in  which  all  nations  are  more  or  less 
sharing,  but  which  in  its  acutest  form  is  concentrated 
in  France ;  it  is  a  struggle  which  cannot  be  fought 
out  either  soon  or  gently,  for  it  claims  generations  of 
men,  infinite  destruction,  suffering,  and  death.  On 
this  issue  hang  the  most  momentous  consequences 
for  evil  and  for  good,  for  France  and  for  Europe  ;  and 
its  effects  are  so  grand  and  so  inevitable  that  it  is 
useless  to  dilate  upon  the  trivialities,  the  confusions, 
the  corruptions,  the  follies,  the  helplessness,  which  are 
but  its  symptoms  and  concomitants. 

The  great  war  and  the  great  overthrow  which  we 
have  lately  witnessed  in  France  are  but  an  episode  in 
the  greater  civil  war.  France  marched  upon  the 
Rhine  in  the  mere  delirium  of  civil  war  ;  she  lies 
prostrate  before  Germany  in  the  exhaustion  of  civil 
war,  because  civil  war  had  almost  dissolved  her  as  a 
nation.  Parties  and  classes  within  her  hate  and  fear 
each  other  more  than  the  invader.  National  spirit 
has  been  broken,  because  the  national  sentiment  itself 
has  been  made  a  new  weapon  of  civil  war.  Religion 


74  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

is  used  as  a  means  of  party  victory,  and,  in  the  language 
of  the  day,  the  Bon  Dieu  has  become  a  deputy,  and 
sits  on  the  Extreme  Right.  So  far  from  its  being 
matter  of  wonder  that  France  should  be  weak,  divided, 
and  restless,  it  would  be  wonderful  if  she  were  not. 
The  real  wonder  is  that  she  exists  as  a  nation  at  all, 
and  that  her  political  mechanism  still  works  as  a  whole 
in  the  midst  of  these  social  battles.  Nations  engaged 
in  civil  war  are  always  distracted  and  changeful,  and 
usually  a  prey  to  their  neighbours  ;  and  it  is  so  far  to 
the  credit  of  the  French  people  that  they  are  carrying 
on  their  social  war  without  actual  fighting  or  material 
anarchy. 

The  nations  of  Europe,  who  from  the  comparative 
calm  of  their  national  unity  point  the  finger  of  scorn 
at  France,  should  at  least  remember  that  the  evils 
which  she  endures  have  an  origin  in  European  even 
more  than  in  French  causes.  That  is  to  say,  the 
problems  which  her  people  have  to  solve,  the  social 
war  which  she  is  battling  through,  and  the  desperate 
parties  and  principles  within  her,  are  common  to  all 
parts  of  civilised  Europe,  and  are  fed  by  European 
resources.  For  various  reasons  these  great  social 
crises  are  brought  to  their  acutest  and  earliest  phases 
in  France.  But  the  issues  are  being  fought  out  for 
Europe,  and  are  envenomed  and  protracted  by  Euro- 
pean entanglements.  France  is  the  first  of  the  great 
nations  of  Europe  which  has  resolutely  faced  and  all 
but  solved  the  crucial  problem  involved  in  passing 
from  the  feudal  to  the  republican  society.  She  is  the 
first  which  has  set  herself  avowedly  to  cast  off  the  old 
skin  of  Catholic  hypocrisy.  And  she  is  the  first 
which  has  taken  as  her  political  basis  the  social 
recognition  of  the  mass  of  the  people.  These  three 
problems,  complex  as  they  are,  might  have  been 
settled  by  France  long  ago  had  she  stood  alone.  The 


FRANCE  AFTER  WAR  75 

obstinacy  of  the  contest  is  promoted  by  the  moral 
and  often  the  material  interference  of  forces  in  the 
rest  of  Europe. 

France  by  herself  had  long  ago  silenced  the 
remnants  of  the  monarchical  and  the  feudal  factions  ; 
but  they  keep  the  field  by  the  immense  moral  support 
which  they  receive  from  the  consolidated  forces  of 
monarchy  and  feudalism  still  dominant  in  Europe. 
By  herself,  France  would  long  ago  have  reduced  her 
ultramontane  Catholics  to  a  powerless  sect,  were  it 
not  that  Europe  and  the  world  still  arm  them  with 
fanatical  fury  against  her.  Thus  also  alone  she  would 
have  settled  the  task  of  the  social  incorporation  of  the 
people,  were  it  not  that  her  privileged  and  propertied 
classes  fight  with  the  desperation  of  an  advanced 
guard,  which  sees  itself  supported  and  encouraged 
by  the  unbroken  ranks  of  the  privileged  in  other 
countries  around  them.  Were  France  transported 
bodily  to  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic,  it  would  be 
short  work  with  monarchy,  feudality,  church,  and 
privilege.  She  suffers  and  heaves,  and  is  torn  in 
pieces  by  her  own  children  as  by  strangers,  because 
she  has  flung  herself  first  into  a  movement  for  which 
Europe  is  not  ready,  but  where  Europe  yet  must 
follow  her  ;  and  as  she  struggles  onward  towards  a 
new  and  more  human  social  order,  she  has  to  make 
head  against  the  feudalisms  and  the  sacerdotalisms  of 
Europe,  against  the  class -passions,  the  bigotry,  the 
valetdom,  the  clericdom  of  the  world. 

In  this  great  revolution  the  last  few  years  have 
witnessed  the  most  extraordinary  change.  The 
deepest  political  fact  of  our  time,  the  most  critical 
of  the  last  two  generations,  is  the  fact  that  since  the 
fall  of  the  empire  the  mass  of  the  French  peasantry 
have  definitely  ranged  themselves  on  the  side  of  the 
republic.  Now,  the  French  peasantry  are  the  great 


76  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

majority  of  French  citizens ;  the  territorial  system 
has  freed  them  from  all  local  dictation,  and  the 
political  system  has  made  them  feel  independence  and 
power.  The  mass  of  the  French  peasantry,  in  the 
material  sense,  are  France  j  and  they  know  it.  They 
were  the  bone  and  blood  of  the  uprising  of  '93  ;  they 
filled  the  armies  which  threw  back  the  kings,  and 
followed  them  over  every  country  of  Europe  ;  they 
decreed  the  revival  of  the  empire  in  1852  ;  and  they 
bore  the  suffering  and  the  slaughter  of  the  invasion  of 
1870.  They  are  not  an  heroic,  not  a  brilliant,  not  a 
generous  order.  They  have  neither  the  genius  nor 
the  magnanimity,  and  happily  none  of  the  fury, 
which  have  often  fired  the  Paris  workmen.  Their 
virtues  are  of  a  soberer,  duller  kind  ;  they  are  patient, 
enduring,  cautious,  frugal,  critical.  They  are  very 
tough,  very  slow  to  persuade,  very  suspicious  of  the 
new,  full  of  worldly  wisdom,  and  as  obstinate  as 
overdriven  mules  ;  and  from  their  numbers,  their 
homogeneity,  their  impassibility,  they  are  very  strong, 
and  feel  that  they  are  very  strong.  Who  that  has 
ever  watched  the  canny  Norman  peasant  on  his 
patrimony,  has  failed  to  read  the  unlimited  caution, 
grit,  and  patience  of  the  man  ?  Who  that  has  ever 
studied  the  French  peasant's  fireside,  the  fireside  of 
Sand  and  Hugo,  of  Millet  and  of  Frere,  has  failed  to 
perceive  that,  narrow,  dull,  and  penurious  as  it  might 
be,  it  is  the  home  of  a  citizen — of  a  citizen  who  has 
no  master  ?  That  man  will  ponder  slowly  over 
things,  doubt,  suspect,  and  think  mainly  of  himself. 
He  will  often  be  wrong,  unjust,  and  selfish ;  but 
when  he  gives  his  vote,  he  will  give  it  as  a  man  who 
intends  to  make  it  good,  and  knows  that  he  can  make 
it  good. 

For  generations  now  he  has  looked  upon  the  town 
citizen   as    his    principal   enemy,   as   a    man    whose 


FRANCE  AFTER  WAR  77 

atheism  is  needlessly  obtrusive,  and  whose  socialism  is 
an  unpardonable  sin.  For  generations  his  political 
life  has  aimed  at  restraining  the  town  workman  ;  and 
for  him  the  town  workman  has  been  embodied  in  the 
republic.  Hence,  he  gave  France  the  first  empire, 
and  in  our  day  the  second  empire.  But  a  great 
change  has  come  over  him,  in  its  own  way  perhaps 
the  greatest  change  of  this  century.  For  the  first 
time  in  modern  French  history  the  peasant  and  the 
town  workman  have  been  brought  together  into  line. 
Widely  as  they  differ  in  their  view  of  its  form, 
though  the  one  means  a  conservative  bourgeoisie^ 
scarcely  differing  from  the  English  monarchy,  and  the 
other  a  democratic  dictatorship,  both  peasant  and 
workman  are  at  one  in  demanding  the  republic.  Nor 
is  it  a  mere  toleration  of  the  republic  that  the  peasant 
is  prepared  for  :  it  is  a  settled  conviction  and  instinct. 

To  him  the  republic  is  now  the  conservative, 
safe,  and  moderate  institution  ;  it  is  identified  with 
property  ;  it  represents  order,  it  gives  a  dignity  to  the 
country  without,  and  puts  an  end  to  civil  war  within. 
The  parties  which  seem  to  him  to  rage  against  the 
republic  are  they  who  breathe  anarchy  and  confisca- 
tion. Horrid  rumours  of  ancient  feudalisms  have  run 
round,  and  the  quiet  useful  curd  is  seen  to  swell  with 
sacerdotal  pretensions,  and  to  meditate  strange  revivals. 
All  this  has  shocked  and  terrified  the  peasant,  till  at 
last  he  has  come  to  think  of  Church  and  Throne  with 
that  kind  of  hate  and  fear  with  which  the  Scotch 
peasant  under  the  Stuarts  thought  of  episcopacy.  He 
has  awakened  from  his  dream  of  the  Red  Spectre, 
which  was  his  bugbear  of  old.  If  he  is  troubled  now 
with  spectres,  it  is  with  the  tales  of  a  Black  Spectre  of 
the  dimes,  and  the  White  Spectre  of  the  corvees. 

During  the  six  months  of  war  nearly  a  million  of 
men  held  arms,  and  hardly  a  home  in  France  but  was 


78   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

thus  associated  with  the  struggle.  And  every  man 
knew  that  he  was  fighting  for  the  republic.  The 
republic  was  France  ;  it  alone  was  clear  of  the  guilt  of 
the  original  disasters  ;  the  only  gleams  of  success  had 
been  won  by  the  republic ;  the  only  captains  who 
gained  high  reputations — the  Faidherbes,  the  Chanzys, 
and  the  Denferts  —  were  known  or  thought  to  be 
republicans.  In  the  storm  of  disasters,  in  the  agony 
of  final  surrender,  and  in  the  last  humiliation  of  the 
cession,  men's  minds  would  turn  to  the  image  of  their 
country, — and  the  symbol  of  their  country  was  always 
the  republic.  Tremendous  sufferings  and  defeat  can 
bind  men  sometimes  together  as  closely  as  illustrious 
victories,  and  sometimes  even  more  closely. 

To  the  old  soldier  of  the  empire  it  was  a  memory 
more  sacred  and  binding  to  have  been  with  the  Emperor 
at  Waterloo  than  to  have  been  beside  him  at  Austerlitz. 
The  legend  of  the  martyrdom  of  Waterloo  bore  its 
fruit  in  the  second  empire,  and  the  men  who  condoned 
the  crime  of  December  were  the  sons  and  grandsons 
of  the  men  who  had  been  dragged  to  bleed  in  the 
death-struggle  of  the  last  years  of  the  empire,  who 
perished  in  Spain,  Germany,  or  Belgium,  who  died 
on  the  march  from  Moscow  or  in  the  bloody  fields 
of  Champagne  and  the  Marne.  The  legend  of  the 
great  war  of  1870  is  slowly  forming  itself;  and  the 
name  under  which  the  battles  of  France  were  fought, 
and  which  symbolised  her  life,  was  the  name  of  the 
republic.  It  is  sometimes  the  vanquished  cause  which 
leaves  deeper  associations  than  the  victorious.  And, 
as  in  every  cottage  in  France,  since  1815,  the  tradition 
of  the  great  events  and  great  sufferings  of  the  genera- 
tion before  grew  personal  and  living  round  the  lurid 
image  of  Napoleon,  so  the  graven  memories  of  1870 
and  1871  clung  with  a  tragic  pathos  round  the  image 
and  name  of  the  republic. 


FRANCE  AFTER  WAR  79 

There  was  thus  a  basis  of  sentiment  to  attach  the 
peasant  to  the  republic  as  an  institution.  But  this 
would  have  availed  little  had  it  not  been  supported  by 
solid  inducements.  This  tendency  was  turned  into  a 
principle  by  the  patience  and  skill  of  one  man.  To 
M.  Gambetta  is  due  at  once  the  conception  and  the 
accomplishment  of  this  grand  political  revolution.  It 
is  a  feat  to  be  ranked  amongst  the  highest  successes  of 
political  sagacity  and  genuine  intuition.  As  a  stroke 
of  policy,  it  ought  to  place  him  amongst  the  two  or 
three  statesmen  of  genius  of  our  time.  And  the 
patience  and  dexterity  with  which  this  policy  was 
elaborated  are  as  fine  as  the  power  of  the  conception. 
M.  Gambetta  saw  that  the  progress  of  the  social 
evolution  was  fatally  interrupted  by  the  antagonism 
between  the  peasant  and  the  artisan,  by  the  gulf 
which  divided  the  one  from  the  other  in  political 
spirit,  and  the  antipathy  of  the  peasant  to  the  republic 
from  which  alone  anything  could  come.  He  saw 
that  the  occasion  had  arrived  when  the  peasant  might 
come  over  to  the  republic,  when  the  gulf  between 
him  and  the  workman  might  be  bridged,  and  when 
both  might  be  rallied  round  a  common  political  ideal. 

With  this  view  he  patiently  set  himself  the  task  to 
present  to  the  mass  of  rural  France  the  republic  as  at 
once  the  national  and  the  conservative  symbol.  For 
three  years  now  he  has  laboured  with  a  patience  and 
an  energy  which  would  have  aroused  suspicion,  had  it 
been  less  unobtrusive,  in  order  to  allay  the  suspicions 
of  the  peasants,  to  show  them  the  republic  and  the 
republican  party  as  the  real  basis  of  order  and  of 
industry,  to  dispel  the  old  association  of  republican 
with  socialist.  The  noble  orations  which,  whilst  free 
speech  was  permitted,  he  addressed  to  France,  were 
always  addressed  to  the  country  at  large,  and  especially 
the  rural  elements,  and  were  as  full  of  the  true  con- 


8o   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

servative  temper  as  they  were  of  national  sentiment. 
They  had  that  success  which  belongs  only  to  the  rare 
orators  of  an  age  who  know  how  to  infuse  a  new  idea 
into  an  entire  generation.  Since  free  speech  has  been 
suppressed,  his  action  has  been  still  more  unceasing  in 
insisting  on  legality  and  order,  in  insisting  on  the 
republic  as  the  principle  of  legality,  and  in  throwing 
on  the  anti-republican  parties  the  character  of  con- 
spirators and  revolutionists.  Never  speaking  in  the 
Chamber,  he  has  laboured  incessantly  to  prevent  his 
party  from  speaking  at  all,  and  from  committing 
act,  word,  or  attitude  of  violence  ;  until,  alone  of  the 
sections  of  the  Chamber,  the  Left  of  Gambetta  is 
the  party  which  has  never  menaced  any  interest,  or 
attempted  any  cabal,  or  indulged  in  any  passion, — 
which  has  been  always  loyal  to  every  legal  right, 
hostile  to  every  change,  and  resolute  against  every 
plot. 

Monarchists,  Churchmen,  Bourbonists,  Orleanists, 
Imperialists,  and  Communists  have  been  seen  in  a 
phantasmagoria  of  conspiracies,  intrigues,  and  coups 
d'etat.  The  republic  and  the  Left,  which  is  its 
guard,  alone  have  represented  to  France  and  to  the 
world  respect  for  rights,  regular  government,  and  an 
era  of  rest.  And  if,  of  this  republican  party  M.  Thiers 
has  been  the  titular  head  and  the  tongue,  undoubtedly 
M.  Gambetta  is  its  genius  and  its  will.  Whilst  Thiers 
came  over  to  it  by  the  effect  of  calculation,  Gambetta 
created  it  by  his  conviction,  energy,  and  self-command. 
And  his  reward  is  patent.  For  two  years  the  factions 
of  the  Assembly  have  been  growing  more  odious  to 
the  nation,  whilst  the  republican  majorities  have 
become  more  certain  and  more  complete.  The 
republican  party  is  no  longer  besieged  in  the  great 
cities  by  armies  of  rural  conservatives.  They  have 
sallied  out  into  the  country,  and  both  have  fraternised. 


FRANCE  AFTER  WAR  81 

The  rural  districts  are  the  true  stronghold  now  of 
the  republicans.  The  catholic  West  is  as  stout  as 
the  turbulent  South  or  the  industrial  North  ;  and  the 
pastoral  centres  are  at  one.  For  the  first  time  in  this 
century  the  country  voters  have  resisted  the  entire 
force  of  the  Government  engine — resisted  it,  and 
broken  it  silently  to  pieces.  The  extreme  angle  of 
Britanny,  at  once  against  its  landlords,  its  priests,  and 
its  officials,  returns  a  republican  vote.  The  peasant 
has  not  changed  his  principles  or  his  aims.  He  is 
still  an  arrant  conservative,  still  bent  on  industrial 
repose,  still  the  sworn  foe  of  all  disturbers  of  Govern- 
ment, from  whatever  side  and  with  whatever  end. 
He  has  not  changed  his  principles,  but  he  has  distinctly 
changed  his  watchwords.  And  he  finds  now  all  that 
he  hates  and  fears  in  the  enemies  of  the  republic.  He 
has  said  to  the  kings,  the  rival  kings,  "  It  is  thou  and 
thy  house  that  trouble  Israel."  And  he  is  a  republican 
because  he  is  a  conservative,  and  because  he  abhors 
revolution. 

From  all  sides  of  France  one  may  hear  the  republican 
leaders  and  managers,  men  who  all  their  lives  have 
looked  to  see  the  peasant  vote  undo  in  a  day  their 
labour  in  the  cities  for  years,  one  may  hear  these  men 
declare  their  wonder  at  the  new  creed  of  the  peasant. 
"  We  cannot  believe  it  now  we  see  it,  we  cannot 
comprehend  it,  though  we  have  worked  for  it,"  they 
say,  as  the  peasants  under  their  eyes  vote  for  the 
republic  in  defiance  of  preYet,  cur6,  and  mayor.  The 
canny,  stubborn,  suspicious,  self-regarding  peasant  is 
the  same  man  now  that  he  always  was,  and  he  is 
voting  for  that  which  in  his  slow,  sure  way  he  has 
found  out  to  be  the  path  of  peace,  order,  law  and 
prosperity.  In  country  towns  and  rural  districts  it  is 
all  the  same ;  whether  it  be  for  members  of  the 
Assembly,  mayors,  or  municipal  council,  the  republican 

G 


82   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

candidate  is  chosen.  There  never  was  a  sillier  jest 
than  that  famous  phrase  of  the  "Republic  without 
republicans."  There  are  now  some  six  or  seven 
millions  of  republicans  ;  not  republicans  by  theory  or 
conviction  or  taste,  not  democrats,  not  even  reformers, 
but  simply  republicans  in  resisting  a  monarchic  revo- 
lution, and  in  founding  a  system  of  law  and  rest.  And 
this  critical  political  conversion  is  mainly  the  work  of 
one  man. 

There  are  few  men  who,  in  this  country,  have  been 
more  hastily  judged  than  M.  Gambetta.  The  Gam- 
betta  of  reality,  the  man  known  to  parties  and  voters 
in  France,  is  as  nearly  as  possible  the  antithesis  of  the 
Gambetta  of  the  vulgar  imagination.  The  idea  that 
he  is  an  impassioned  rhetorician,  a  violent  demagogue, 
and  a  man  of  phrases,  is  simply  ludicrous  to  those  who 
really  know  the  secret  of  his  influence,  and  his  actual 
mode  of  working.  That  he  was  the  one  man  who 
rose  in  France,  and  who  roused  France,  during  the 
war  ;  the  one  man  whom  the  Germans  recognised, 
whom  they  still  recognise,  as  a  great  force — that  he  is 
an  orator,  and  capable  of  Titanic  outbursts  of  energy, 
is  no  doubt  true ;  but  it  is  not  the  light  in  which  he 
has  been  seen  since  the  hour  of  the  capitulation.  This 
demagogue  has  for  twelve  months  never  addressed  an 
audience  ;  this  man  of  phrases  has  for  years  hardly 
uttered  a  word  in  the  Chamber  ;  this  violent  democrat 
has  never  let  slip  a  revolutionary  suggestion.  And  all 
the  while  his  influence  has  been  extending,  and  his 
action  growing  more  definite,  and  never  more  so  than 
during  the  time  when  every  republican  channel  has 
been  shut. 

Far  different  are  the  modes  in  which  his  power  has 
been  gained.  By  the  most  solid  and  lawful  of  all 
methods  of  gaining  influence  j  by  the  personal  ascend- 
ency of  a  strong  nature  and  a  clear  brain,  exerted 


FRANCE  AFTER  WAR  83 

silently,  daily,  and  unconsciously;  by  sagacious  counsels, 
based  on  passionate  convictions  ;  by  fortitude,  reti- 
cence, self-control,  patience,  and  sagacity  ;  by  dex- 
terity in  seizing  any  political  opportunity;  by  capacity 
to  accept  the  inevitable,  and  turn  it  to  better  uses  ; 
by  the  most  difficult  of  all  tasks  for  a  political  chief, 
that  of  rallying,  disciplining,  and  creating  a  party 
whilst  submitting  to  a  succession  of  defeats  without 
the  hope  of  victory  or  the  chance  of  retaliation — 
teaching  them  to  endure  an  almost  crushing  re- 
pression without  recourse  to  insurrection  ;  these  are 
the  means  by  which  Gambetta  has  succeeded  in 
imposing  his  policy  on  the  republican  party,  as  in 
imposing  the  republican  party  upon  France.  It  is  a 
career  so  truly  that  of  the  leader  of  a  national  party, 
such  as  we  understand  it,  that  it  is  strange  this  has 
not  been  more  fully  recognised  in  England.  With 
untiring  energy  and  prudence  he  has  directed  the 
principal  republican  journal  which  has  steadily  re- 
organised the  republican  party,  whilst  never  admitting 
a  chance  for  prosecution  even  under  a  "  state  of  siege." 
Its  policy  has  been  strictly  conservative,  whilst  at  the 
same  time  essentially  republican.  Its  task  has  been 
daily  to  insist  on  legality,  respect  for  established  insti- 
tutions, the  renunciation  of  all  violent  panaceas,  and 
the  gradual  formation  of  a  regular  government.  In 
the  Chamber  the  work  of  this  stirring  orator  has  been 
to  suppress  all  speeches,  to  organise  the  party  votes,  to 
sustain  the  courage  of  the  waverers  after  defeat,  to 
repress  every  outburst  of  impatience.  Those  who  go 
to  the  Assembly  prepared  to  see  the  Left  the  aggres- 
sive party,  have  been  struck  by  their  patience  and 
reticence  under  every  attack,  their  resolve  to  avoid  all 
discussion,  their  inflexible  principle  of  recognising  no 
constituent  powers  in  the  Chamber  ;  and  at  the  head 
of  the  party,  intensely  active  but  resolutely  silent, 


84   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

persuading,  encouraging,  calming  all,  but  never  mount- 
ing the  tribune,  the  greatest  popular  orator  of  France. 
It  has  been  a  task  of  peculiar  difficulty,  because, 
whilst  reassuring  the  rural  conservatives,  M.  Gambetta 
was  risking  the  indignation  of  the  city  democrats.  His 
most  violent  enemies  are  found  in  the  Commune  and 
the  friends  of  the  Commune.  These  fanatics,  to  whom 
metaphysical  theories  are  of  more  importance  than 
national  results,  have  fallen  upon  him  as  the  worst  of 
all  possible  enemies — a  traitor  to  democracy.  The 
late  rupture  between  M.  Gambetta  and  the  Paris 
radicals  has  been  and  still  is  a  real  danger  to  M. 
Gambetta.  His  grand  policy  of  bringing  the  rural 
conservatives  and  the  town  democrats  for  once  into 
line  upon  the  ground  of  a  conservative  republic,  may 
of  course  always  fail  if  the  city  republicans  are  in- 
capable of  adopting  a  compromise.  It  is  true  that  the 
compromise  to  which  they  were  invited  was  one  of 
those  compromises  in  which  one  side  appears  to  yield 
everything ;  for  the  Republic  of  the  last  twelve 
months  has  been  as  oppressive  and  anti-republican  as 
the  worst  of  the  tyrannies  which  preceded  it,  and  as 
arbitrary  as  any  precarious  government  could  be  made 
to  be.  And  if  M.  Gambetta  and  his  party  seemed  to 
be  more  than  accepting,  almost  supporting  this  system, 
as  if  for  mere  sake  of  its  name,  it  was  hard  for  the 
popular  masses  to  believe  that  they  got  anything  by 
the  name.  There  are,  however,  two  things  in  the 
Republic  of  Marshal  MacMahon :  in  the  first  place 
the  institution  is  the  Republic,  and  in  the  next  place 
the  men  are  avowedly  temporary.  It  was  not,  like 
the  empire,  a  dynasty  and  a  permanent  despotism  ; 
it  is  not,  like  the  monarchy,  a  principle  and  a  class- 
tyranny.  It  was  a  temporary  repression,  grievous  to 
bear,  but  worth  bearing  for  the  sake  of  all  that  it 
made  possible. 


FRANCE  AFTER  WAR  85 

If  it  has  irritated  democrats  in  France,  it  has 
puzzled  constitutionalists  in  England,  to  see  the 
entire  party  of  the  Left  resolutely  clinging  to  a 
Chamber  which  they  branded  as  mere  usurpation, 
accepting  without  protest  its  incendiary  decisions,  and 
ardently  working  at  its  combinations  whilst  denying 
its  right  to  make  a  law.  To  their  own  friends  they 
too  often  seemed  to  be  men  who  were  taking  part 
with  a  cabal,  which  in  set  words  declared  itself  at  war 
with  the  nation,  a  cabal  which  the  republican  minority 
were  utterly  powerless  to  restrain.  Their  policy, 
however,  was  a  perfectly  intelligible  one.  The 
Assembly  represented  legality,  and  it  also  represented 
the  republic  ;  for  if  the  Assembly  was  not  the  legal 
power  of  the  nation,  and  if  it  had  not  accepted  the 
republic,  there  was  nothing  legal  but  the  empire,  and 
the  field  was  open  to  any  successful  adventure.  And 
it  was  of  the  last  importance  that  the  plank  of  legality 
should  be  retained  in  the  storm,  and  the  republic 
appear  before  the  nation  as  the  sole  legitimate  power. 
Then  the  army  would  obey  the  Assembly  and  its 
chosen  authorities,  and  to  defy  the  Assembly  was  to 
open  the  era  of  pronunciamentos.  Again,  had  the 
slightest  pretext  been  given  for  repressive  measures 
against  the  republican  party,  had  a  suspicion  found 
a  foothold  that  it  was  engaged  in  insurrectionary 
schemes,  the  rural  conservatives  would  have  instantly 
flung  off  from  the  republic  as  being  no  longer  identified 
with  order.  The  republicans,  then,  would  have  been 
the  conspirators,  the  malcontents,  as  of  old,  and  the 
legitimate  holders  of  power  would  again  have  been 
saviours  of  society.  This  old,  old  game  of  the  retro- 
grade cause  has  been  utterly  checkmated  by  the 
patience,  the  self-control,  and  the  farsightedness  of  the 
republican  leaders. 

Their  parliamentary  tactics    have    been   simple  in 


86   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

design,  though  very  trying  in  execution.  Their  plan 
has  been  to  accept  to  the  utmost  the  legal  authority  of 
the  Chamber,  to  check  its  excesses  by  skilful  tactics, 
whilst  never  appearing  as  a  factious  or  insurgent 
element.  A  single  violent  protest  would  have  called 
out  all  the  revolutionary  instincts,  have  called  them 
out  to  no  purpose,  and  to  certain  repression  ;  whilst  a 
direct  appeal  to  the  nation  would  have  broken  the 
confidence  of  the  conservative  peasants.  This  is  the 
secret  of  what  some  have  called  the  tameness  of  Gam- 
betta,  and  what  the  ardent  democrats  have  attacked  as 
open  apostasy.  •  In  the  language  .of  one  of  them,  the 
business  of  the  party  is  falre  le  mort^  to  assume 
extinction  whilst  working  with  intense  activity  and 
watching  for  every  opportunity.  It  is  a  policy  need- 
ing first-rate  organisation  and  mutual  confidence, 
great  ingenuity  and  energy,  with  the  power  of  waiting 
for  the  chance.  The  grand  aim  was  to  bring  about  a 
dissolution,  whilst  never  declaring  war  on  the  majority, 
or  appealing  to  the  people  against  them.  Gradually 
it  was  believed  that  the  play  of  parties  would  discredit 
and  defeat  each  succeeding  government,  until  the 
failure  of  every  combination  should  bring  about  dissolu- 
tion in  very  despair. 

It  is  the  fashion  in  England  to  make  merry  over 
the  French  Assembly,  and  the  gross  caricatures  of  its 
public  sittings  with  which  leading  journals  indulge  the 
pharisaical  vanity  of  English  constitutionalists  have 
misled  many  amongst  us  as  to  the  real  character  of 
that  Assembly.  But,  as  all  the  world  in  France 
knows,  the  public  sittings  are  merely  the  interludes  of 
its  real  activity,  and  are  often  devoted,  like  those  of 
other  parliaments,  to  the  noisiest  jesters  or  most  violent 
bores.  The  art  of  parliamentary  manoeuvring  is  not 
the  noblest  of  modern  inventions ;  but,  such  as  the  art 
is,  it  is  practised  in  France  with  consummate  ability. 


FRANCE  AFTER  WAR  87 

At  any  rate,  the  tactics  which  the  Left  have  displayed 
in  a  situation  of  desperate  emergency  may  be  ranked 
with  the  best  examples  of  discipline  and  sagacity  in 
party  organisation.  The  defeat  of  the  Monarchic 
plot  in  November  was  a  happy  instance  of  what  can  be 
done  by  an  indomitable  minority.  Even  before  Easter 
the  De  Broglie  Government  would  have  been  defeated, 
and  have  disappeared,  had  not  the  plans  of  M.  Gambetta 
been  ruined  by  the  unlucky  blunder  of  M.  Ledru-Rollin. 
The  policy  at  last  has  succeeded,  and  at  length  the  im- 
possibility of  the  actual  Assembly  continuing  to  govern 
the  country  has  been  made  manifest  by  the  mere 
machinery  of  parliamentary  strategy,  without  a  single 
excuse  for  the  charge  that  the  Left  have  appealed  to 
force,  or  have  quitted  the  ground  of  strict  legality. 

The  result  of  this  policy  has  been  to  extend  the 
republican  sentiment  in  France  as  it  could  have  been 
extended  in  no  other  way.  By  the  universal  consent 
of  all  parties,  an  honest  appeal  to  the  country  at  this 
moment  would  show  an  overwhelming  republican 
majority.  According  to  good  authorities,  a  direct  and 
honest  appeal  to  the  nation,  on  the  three  typical  causes, 
would  return  republic,  empire,  and  monarchy  in  pro- 
portions of  six,  two,  and  a  half.  According  to  some, 
Gambetta  would  be  carried  as  deputy  in  four-fifths  of 
all  the  departments  of  France.  But  if  the  country  is 
essentially  republican,  it  is  at  the  same  time  truly  con- 
servative. The  advanced  democrats  are  in  a  scattered 
minority,  and,  since  the  collapse  of  the  communal 
insurrection,  a  new  democratic  rising  is  impossible  for 
many  a  year.  Hence,  whilst  nothing  but  a  republican 
settlement  will  ultimately  satisfy  the  country,  nothing 
but  a  moderate  government  can  hope  for  permanent 
support.  Fortunately,  the  men  of  the  Left  are  clearly 
convinced  of  this  ;  they  are  aware  of  the  necessity  of 
patience,  and  see  that  their  day  has  not  yet  come. 


88   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Perhaps  it  would  be  the  most  desirable  solution  if, 
after  one  or  two  intermediate  steps,  a  strong  republican 
government  could  be  established  on  the  type  of  men 
like  M.  Grevy.  To  the  communards  and  the  ultra- 
radicals  no  doubt  M.  GreVy  represents  nothing  but  the 
bourgeois  reaction,  and  M.  Gambetta  himself  is  to  them 
much  of  the  same  colour.  But  communards  and 
ultra-radicals  for  the  present  are  out  of  the  field,  and 
M.  Gambetta  himself  is  a  long  way  from  being  under- 
stood as  the  practical  statesman  that  he  is. 

All  these  and  similar  calculations  would  be  worth- 
less if  there  was  ground  for  the  current  belief  in  the 
success  of  imperialist  plots.  Because  military  adven- 
turers have  so  often  succeeded  in  France  and  else- 
where, because  Napoleon  III.  seized  an  empire  amidst 
the  wrangles  of  republicans,  we  are  all  apt  to  assume 
that  the  party  have  only  to  fix  their  day  to  proclaim 
Napoleon  I V .  It  may  be  so,  and  he  would  be  a  bold 
man  who  felt  certain  that  any  given  thing  was  impos- 
sible in  the  present  aspect  of  France.  But  there  seems 
little  in  the  state  of  the  country  to  justify  these  expec- 
tations. The  imperialists  are  powerful,  or  rather  con- 
spicuous, by  their  audacity,  skill,  and  cohesion,  by  the 
experience  of  twenty  years  of  government  and  power, 
by  the  goodwill  of  large  sections  of  the  army,  by  the 
general  tradition  and  prestige  of  that  which  has  filled 
men's  minds  and  accomplished  great  changes.  For 
twenty  years  every  adventurer  of  courage  and  ambition 
was  a  born  imperialist ;  every  successful  capitalist, 
soldier,  or  official  was  in  some  sort  pledged  to  the 
only  party  which  offered  him  a  career,  and  for  which 
he  could  feel  a  fellow-feeling.  The  second  empire  was 
a  sort  of  grand  Credit  Mobilier  or  joint-stock  com- 
pany (unlimited)  for  military,  financial,  or  professional 
speculators.  The  men  who  meant  to  win,  and  who 
knew  how  to  win,  were  all  entered  as  members  of  this 


FRANCE  AFTER  WAR  89 

great  national  Jockey  Club.  And  naturally,  though  the 
company  itself  has  been  wound  up,  its  old  frequenters 
are  the  men  who  make  a  great  noise  in  the  world,  and 
fill  it  with  rumours  of  a  new  revival  of  the  concern. 

This  is  perhaps  the  reason  why  the  French  Rentes 
are  an  inverse  and  not  a  direct  barometer  of  public 
affairs  in  France.  The  witty  Dean  said  there  was  no 
such  fool  as  the  Three  per  Cents.  The  Three  per 
Cents  may  be  very  shortsighted,  though  in  England 
they  bear  some  relation  to  prospects  of  national  pros- 
perity. But  the  French  Three  per  Cents  are  not  only 
foolish  and  shortsighted,  but  they  give  way  to  political 
passion.  A  vision  of  successful  conspiracy  sends  them 
up  ;  the  probability  of  civil  war  makes  them  buoyant ; 
and  the  prospect  of  a  really  settled  government  will 
send  the  quotations  down  to  "heavy  "  or  "  flat."  The 
farther  off  grows  the  chance  of  the  country  being 
turned  into  a  national  "hell,"  the  more  depressed 
grows  the  rentier  world.  And  as  the  French  nation 
in  general  do  not  do  much  in  Rentes,  their  rise  or  fall 
will  depend  on  the  prospect  which  the  speculator  class 
may  entertain  of  a  legal  exploitation  of  society.  A 
party  like  this  is  naturally  strong,  and  it  would  be 
strange  indeed  if  we  did  not  hear  a  great  deal  of  its 
activity.  But  it  lacks  two  things  now  which  enabled 
it  formerly  to  seize  power  and  found  an  empire.  The 
imperial  tradition  was  strong  with  the  peasants,  and  it 
was  paramount  with  the  army.  It  was  the  only  thing 
with  an  imposing  past  and  with  a  possible  future. 
Both  these  are  lost  to  it  now.  The  tradition  of  the 
empire  is  shattered  for  ever  in  the  homes  of  the 
peasantry.  The  Church  has  laboured  to  uproot  it, 
and  laboured  we  may  hope  for  the  Republic,  not  for 
itself.  And  what  of  that  tradition  the  Church  failed 
to  uproot  was  uprooted  by  successive  mayors  and 
prefets  of  Gambetta,  Thiers,  and  De  Broglie. 


90  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

We  may  take  it  as  admitted  that  whilst  the  empire 
is  strong  amongst  successful  bourgeois  and  large 
sections  of  the  rich,  it  has  died  out  for  ever  from  the 
rural  districts  of  France.  As  to  the  army,  we  are 
assured  on  all  sides  that  it  is  only  partly  imperialist, 
and  that,  by  the  best  accounts,  to  an  extent  not 
exceeding  a  third.  On  the  other  hand,  a  section  in 
the  lower  ranks,  hardly  inferior  in  number,  is  just  as 
distinctly  republican  ;  whilst  the  bulk  may  be  taken 
as  unwilling  to  be  the  tools  of  any  political  party. 
The  esprit  de  corps  of  the  old  Imperial  Guard  is  no 
longer  available  ;  the  sense  of  power  as  of  a  praetorian 
band  is  gone  j  and  the  army  itself  is  far  more  likely 
to  fell  to  pieces  than  to  impose  a  new  dynasty  on  the 
country.  These  are  not  hopeful  elements  for  the 
imperial  restoration  ;  and  though  perhaps  in  the  chaos 
of  parties  it  is  not  altogether  impossible,  it  would  need 
a  conjunction  of  chances,  and  a  genius  for  conspiracy, 
such  as  are  not  at  all  likely  to  be  vouchsafed  to  the 
prayers  of  the  Corsican  band.  If  they  were  going  to 
succeed  in  their  coup  d'etat  or  pronunciamento^  why  has 
it  not  come  off  already — for  assuredly  as  good  oppor- 
tunities have  arisen  as  are  ever  likely  to  arise  ?  And 
if  it  were  to  succeed,  and  the  flaccid  lad  at  Chiselhurst 
came  back  in  the  purple  and  the  bees,  how  long  would 
his  reign  be  likely  to  endure  ?  The  empire  is  by  its 
essence  an  autocracy — a  democratic  autocracy,  it  may 
be,  but  in  any  case  a  government  ultimately  resting 
in  a  single  hand.  That  is  its  strength  and  its  claim. 
If  it  were  anything  else,  it  would  not  differ  from  any 
of  the  other  parties  of  moral  disorder  which,  since  the 
fall  of  M.  Thiers,  have  been  struggling  to  possess 
themselves  of  France.  But  where  is  the  strong  man 
of  the  third  empire,  and  how  would  any  of  his  viziers 
or  marshals  differ  from  the  rest  of  the  generals  who 
conspire  and  vapour  at  Versailles  ? 


91 

There  is,  however,  another  danger  to  which  France 
is  exposed,  perhaps  more  real  than  socialist  insurrec- 
tions or  imperial  plots.  In  the  condition  in  which 
France  lies,  she  is  practically  at  the  mercy  of  her  late 
enemy.  As  every  one  but  the  English  ministry  saw, 
the  so-called  peace  of  Frankfort  left  France  utterly 
exposed  to  a  second  overthrow  at  the  will  of  Germany. 
In  a  military  sense  three  weeks  would  suffice  to  bring 
the  German  Emperor  to  the  gates  of  Paris,  and  no 
one  seems  to  see  anything  to  stop  him.  The  military 
caste  throughout  Germany  long  to  finish  their  work  ; 
the  military  and  official  caste  are  scandalised  that 
France  should  presume  to  live ;  that  she  should  be 
still  wealthy  is  a  clear  casus  belli.  Prince  Bismarck  is 
said  to  speak  of  the  five  milliards  with  the  self-reproach 
of  a  bandit  chief  who  discovers  that  a  captive  whom 
he  has  just  ransomed  could  have  found  double  the 
sum,  had  he  been  wrung  rather  more  sharply.  It  is 
certain  that  renewal  of  the  war  has  been  more  than 
once  contemplated  in  Germany,  and  is  still  looked  on 
as  merely  adjourned.  The  safety  of  France  therefore 
rests  only  on  the  good  sense  of  the  German  people, 
and  their  power  to  resist  the  criminal  ambition  of  the 
German  chiefs.  No  one  in  France  or  out  of  it  can 
seriously  believe  that  the  French  army  is  in  any  way 
equal  to  meet  the  German  army  in  the  field.  The 
re -organisation  of  the  army  has  been  much  talked 
about,  but  all  accounts  concur  in  showing  that  it  has 
not  gone  beyond  that  stage.  Catastrophes  like  that 
of  1870  are  not  repaired  in  a  moment,  and  every 
authority  agrees  in  the  opinion  that  the  army  is  still 
under  the  influence  of  that  complete  overthrow.1 

There  is  not  the  slightest  ground  for  the  assertion 

1  This  great  danger,  as  we  now  know,  was  imminent  in  1875,  and 
was  only  averted  by  the  secret  influence  of  the  sovereigns  of  England, 
of  Russia,  and  European  diplomacy. 


92    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

so  sedulously  repeated  by  official  organs  in  Berlin,  that 
France  is  preparing  to  renew  the  contest.  Neither  in 
nor  out  of  the  army  is  there  any  dream  of  the  kind. 
Frenchmen  indeed  would  be  wanting  in  every  sense 
of  patriotism  did  they  accept  the  partition  of  their 
country  as  final,  and  took  the  treaty  of  Frankfort  as 
the  date  of  a  new  national  era.  But  as  it  is  impossible 
that  it  could  be  otherwise,  it  is  hypocrisy  to  pretend 
that  because  Frenchmen  do  not  admit  what  it  would 
be  base  in  them  to  admit,  they  are  therefore  preparing 
for  war.  There  is  all  the  difference  between  declining 
to  believe  the  finality  of  an  act  of  conquest  and  the 
active  intention  to  dispute  it  as  a  fact.  Nations  are 
often  compelled  to  recognise  as  facts  what  they  would 
be  craven  to  sanction  as  rights.  For  a  generation 
after  Waterloo,  the  French  people  talked  of  revenge 
more  loudly  and  more  unanimously  than  they  have 
ever  done  towards  Germany  before  Sedan  or  since. 

If  our  statesmen  in  1815-1825  had  acted  on  the 
assumption  that  these  inevitable  protests  were  equiva- 
lent to  a  national  intention  to  renew  the  war,  they 
would  have  acted  in  bad  faith  and  with  wanton 
aggression.  Since  no  conceivable  acts  of  spoliation, 
which  German  hypocrisy  calls  guarantees,  could  have 
forced  the  French  people  to  acknowledge  them  as 
based  on  incontestable  right,  unless  the  French  people 
had  lost  all  sentiment  of  honour  along  with  the  loss  of 
the  provinces,  it  is  ill  faith  to  see  the  renewal  of  war 
in  every  groan  for  the  cities  and  the  citizens  which 
have  been  torn  from  them.  If  the  annexation  of  half 
of  all  France  had  been  found  necessary  to  the  strategic 
combinations  of  Von  Moltke,  it  would  have  been  the 
duty  of  the  other  half  to  refuse  to  acknowledge  it  as 
a  right,  however  much  they  were  forced  to  accept  it 
as  a  fact. 

The  question  then  is  solely  one  of  fact,  and  the 


FRANCE  AFTER  WAR  93 

patent  fact  is  that  France  is  not  contemplating  war, 
in  any  sense  that  belongs  to  political  realities,  in  any 
sense  in  which  it  is  not  just  as  true  to  say  that 
Germany  is  contemplating  war  with  Russia,  or  Russia 
with  Germany.  Every  nation  which  maintains  an 
army  assumes  that  war  is  not  impossible,  and  every 
nation  which  has  been  dismembered  hopes  the  day 
may  come  when  its  lost  member  may  return.  In 
this  sense,  and  in  this  sense  only,  is  France  contem- 
plating revenge  ;  and  in  this  sense  Denmark  may  be 
said  to  be  contemplating  war  on  Germany,  or  Turkey 
on  Greece,  or  Spain  on  England.  There  is  not  a 
single  party,  not  a  single  journal,  in  France  which 
hints  at  a  renewal  of  jthe  war.  Responsible  men  of 
all  sections,  and  indeed  the  people  at  large,  are  far  too 
conscious  of  their  own  prostration,  and  of  the  utter 
madness  of  the  attempt,  to  make  such  a  policy  en- 
durable. Of  all  parties  the  republican  party,  if  any, 
is  pledged  to  the  national  honour  ;  and  of  all  men  in 
it,  Gambetta  represents  most  distinctly  the  principle 
of  no  surrender.  But  the  republican  party  and  its 
chief  stand  pledged  to  a  policy  of  peace.  And  though 
a  political  party  may  not  always  disclose  their  real 
intentions,  a  party  would  be  instantly  discredited 
which  publicly  discountenanced  a  national  desire. 

According  to  a  popular  theory,  a  theory  most 
grateful  to  German  arrogance  and  British  morality, 
the  entire  French  nation  is  in  a  state  of  physical, 
moral,  and  national  decrepitude.  There  are  always 
wiseacres  who  derive  solid  satisfaction  from  shaking 
their  heads  over  Sodom  and  Gomorrah,  and  explaining 
the  mysteries  of  national  corruption.  Curiously  enough 
it  is  a  practice  in  which  all  nations  indulge  in  turn, 
and  with  the  smallest  possible  data.  A  generation 
ago  it  was  the  fashion  to  groan  over  the  decadence  of 
England,  the  vitals  of  which,  we  were  told,  were  eaten 


94   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

up  with  pauperism,  gin,  and  the  Haymarket.  At 
another  time  Germany  was  understood  to  be  reduced 
to  a  state  of  universal  syncope  by  addiction  to  meta- 
physics and  nicotine.  At  another  time  Russia  is 
supposed  to  be  the  victim  of  general  gangrene,  and  a 
great  moralist  has  warned  us  that  nothing  can  come 
out  of  Italy  but  dancers  and  singers.  These  whole- 
sale indictments  against  nations  are  equally  easy  and 
equally  absurd.  When  thirty-six  millions  of  men  in 
the  very  centre  of  Europe  are  found  in  a  state  of  real 
decay,  the  knell  will  have  struck  for  the  civilisation  of 
Europe.  Europe  is  a  political  unit,  and  its  civilisation 
is  homogeneous,  and  if  one-fifth  of  its  area  is  in  a 
dying  state,  Europe  has  not  long  to  live.  The  brain 
or  the  heart  of  a  living  body  might  as  well  dilate  with 
a  gloomy  satisfaction  about  the  signs  of  cancer  im- 
pending over  the  misguided  stomach,  as  Englishmen 
or  Germans  moralise  over  the  signs  of  dissolution  in 
France.  Just  as  it  is  the  conviction  of  profound 
provincials  that  our  modern  Babylon  is  a  mystery  of 
abomination,  so  it  is  the  faith  of  profound  politicians 
that  some  particular  race  in  Europe  is  rotting  towards 
its  end  ;  so,  too,  it  is  the  inward  belief  of  the  superior 
American  that  the  old  world  is  used  up,  and  so  the 
apostles  of  a  new  life  in  Salt  Lake  will  assure  us  that 
the  old  American  States  are  doomed.  Of  all  satire 
national  satire  is  the  most  obvious,  as  it  is  certainly  the 
most  monotonous. 

That  society  in  France  is  in  active  convulsion  and 
transition,  that  her  national  cohesion  is  suffering  most 
violent  shocks,  that  classes  and  strata  of  her  society  are 
on  the  point  of  final  extinction,  all  this  is  too  obvious 
to  be  discussed.  But  the  state  of  exhaustion  and 
corruption  within  her  is  not  nearly  so  great  as  that 
which  some  other  nations  have  experienced,  and  which 
more  than  once  she  has  experienced  herself.  This 


FRANCE  AFTER  WAR  95 

does  not  to-day  approach  the  state  of  disorganisation 
and  apparent  death  in  which  Germany  lay  in  the 
Thirty  Years'  War,  or  in  which  Prussia  lay  on  the 
morrow  of  Jena  ;  nor  does  it  approach  that  which 
France  herself  has  known  in  the  mediaeval  civil  wars,  or 
in  the  declining  years  of  Louis  XIV.  A  superficial 
moralist,  who  dilated  on  the  state  of  England  during 
the  reign  of  Charles  II.,  would  have  found  little  to 
remind  him  that  she  had  just  produced  Cromwell  and 
Shakespeare,  and  was  about  to  produce  Newton  and 
Marlborough.  The  elasticity  of  France  in  recovering 
from  the  havoc  of  the  war,  and  in  unfolding  incredible 
resources,  has  filled  the  world  with  wonder,  and  has 
filled  Prince  Bismarck's  soul  with  pangs  of  covetous 
remorse.  In  very  truth  France,  for  generations,  has 
never  been  so  laborious,  so  thrifty,  so  prosperous,  so 
ingenious,  so  rich,  so  active  as  she  is  at  this  moment. 
Amidst  black  spots  marked  with  unutterable  corrup- 
tion, and  perhaps  with  physical  decline,  the  millions 
who  cultivate  her  vast  and  prolific  area  are  as  hardy, 
alert,  and  sober  as  ever  they  were  known  to  us  before. 
Absinthe,  Ernest  Feydeau,  caf6s  chantants,  and 
baccarat  are  not  much  in  vogue  amongst  them  ;  and 
if  these  reach  as  much  as  a  million,  there  are  thirty- 
five  millions  to  whom  they  are  unknown.  A  people 
so  intelligent  and  vigorous  have  raised  France  before 
out  of  deeper  disasters,  and  with  far  less  available 
resources. 

It  may  well  be  that  worse  is  in  store  for  her  yet, 
and  that  the  lowest  point  of  her  agony  has  not  even 
now  been  reached.  It  may  well  be  that  a  generation 
or  generations  may  still  be  needed  for  the  final  settle- 
ment of  France.  The  task  which  she  has  set  herself 
to  solve  is  one  which  demands  generations,  and  in 
which  even  greater  catastrophes  may  seem  insignificant. 
The  passage  from  an  exhausted  to  a  new  type  of 


96   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

society  is  invariably  surrounded  with  convulsion  and 
disaster.  And  if  out  of  the  ebb  and  flow  of  the 
revolutionary  struggle  we  are  destined  to  see  grow  up 
in  France  a  permanent  and  solid  republic,  victorious 
over  the  opposing  forces,  whether  feudal,  military,  or 
Catholic,  the  memory  of  the  struggles  through  which 
it  had  been  won  would  be  speedily  effaced,  and  the 
price  at  which  it  was  secured  would  be  cheerfully  and 
easily  accepted. 


IV 

LEON  GAMBETTA 

(1882) 

This  was  a  memorial  address  on  the  death  of  Gambetta, 
December  31,  1882,  and  was  delivered  in  Newton 
Hall  shortly  after  the  State  funeral,  January  6, 
1883.  It  was  published  in  the  Contemporary  Review 
(vol.  xliii.}.  It  is  in  form  what  the  French  call  an 
Eloge,  and  it  must  be  read  as  the  funeral  discourse 
given  at  a  public  ceremony  by  one  who  was  deeply 
absorbed  in  the  crisis  of  the  Republic,  and  who  had  long 
been  in  personal  relations  with  the  dead  Statesman, 
his  friends,  and  colleagues,  A  long  journey  round  the 
French  Provinces  in  the  autumn  of  1877,  during  the 
great  Electoral  campaign,  to  decide  if  Marshal  MacMahon 
should  se  soumettre  or  se  demettre,  when  the  writer 
sent  a  series  of  letters  to  the  Times,  and  had  been  in 
touch  with  all  the  Republican  committees  centralised  by 
Gambetta,  had  given  him  a  special  insight  into  the  efforts 
which  forced  the  Marshal  to  resign  in  December  1877 
(1908}. 

FOR  good  or  for  evil,  Leon  Gambetta  was  bound  up 
with  the  Republic  as  was  no  other  contemporary  life. 
He  was  the  first  statesman  of  European  importance 
formally  to  offer  his  public  homage  to  Comte  as  the 
greatest  mind  of  the  nineteenth  century  ;  and  formally 
to  adopt,  as  his  leading  idea  in  politics,  Comte's  great 

97  H 


98   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

aphorism :  "  Progress  can  only  arise  out  of  the 
development  of  Order."  But  it  is  not  for  this  that 
Gambetta  holds  a  place  of  prime  importance  in  my 
eyes.  The  doings  of  a  statesman  are  what  concern 
us,  and  not  his  protestations.  And  it  is  in  the  region 
of  action  that  Gambetta  foreshadows  the  type  of  the 
Republican  statesman — rudely  and  incompletely,  no 
doubt — but  with  all  the  essential  elements.  He  is 
the  first  European  statesman  of  this  century  who  is 
heart  and  soul  Republican  ;  the  only  one  whose  fibre 
is  entirely  popular ;  who  saw  that  the  Republic 
implied  a  real  social  reconstruction  j  he  is  the 
only  European  statesman  who  is  equally  zealous  for 
progress  and  for  order,  and  most  assuredly  he  is  the 
only  statesman  of  this  century  who  has  formally 
thrown  away  every  kind  of  theological  crutch. 

This  is  no  panegyric  of  a  public  man.  Of  such 
we  have  had  enough.  It  is  no  critical  analysis  of  a 
striking  personality.  We  are  met  here  neither  to 
bury  Caesar,  nor  to  praise  him.  Brutus  and  Cassius 
and  the  rest  have  told  us  that  he  was  ambitious,  and 
had  many  grievous  faults.  I  am  not  about  to  dispute 
it.  There  are  many  things  in  his  public  career, 
especially  in  its  later  years,  which  we  wholly  fail  to 
reconcile,  not  only  with  the  best  type  of  the 
statesman,  but  with  any  reasonable  version  of  his 
own  principles.  As  to  his  private  life,  there  are 
things,  perhaps,  gross  and  unworthy,  and  a  public 
man  has  no  private  life.  But  unworthy  if  they  be, 
they  were  not  of  the  kind  which  seriously  disable  a 
public  career.  He  was  not  a  corrupting  pedantocrat 
like  Guizot,  nor  a  corrupted  cynic  like  Thiers  ;  he 
was  not  a  king  of  gamblers  like  Napoleon,  nor  a  king 
of  jobbers  like  Louis  Philippe.  He  was  a  jovial, 
unabashed  son  of  Paris  ;  without  special  refinement  of 
life,  or  sensitive  delicacy  of  conscience.  We  have  yet 


L^ON  GAMBETTA  99 

no  means  of  proving  the  truth  of  the  stories  that  we 
hear  of  the  kind  of  men  who  from  time  to  time 
shared  his  intimacy,  and  of  the  enterprises  or 
adventures  to  which  he  allowed  himself  to  be  made 
a  more  or  less  blinded  accomplice.  Let  us  leave  these 
tales  for  time  to  reveal.  However  they  turn  out,  the 
essential  man  in  the  main  is  known  to  us  now. 

If  he  allowed  himself  familiarity  with  unworthy 
adventurers,  certain  it  is,  that  in  all  parts  of  France  he 
retained  till  his  death  the  devoted  attachment  of  the 
most  honourable  spirits  of  his  country.  If  his  name 
was  used  at  times  to  back  up  a  financial  job,  it  is  yet 
most  clear  that  with  portentous  opportunities  for 
serving  himself,  he  neither  made  nor  spent  a  fortune. 
If  his  policy  was  not  always  consistent  with  a  high 
sense  of  honour,  it  was  never  dictated  by  vulgar 
ambition.  Coarseness  of  nature,  whether  in  private 
or  in  public  life,  is  no  final  bar  to  greatness  in  a 
statesman.  The  greatest  names  in  political  history 
have  often  been  soiled  with  unedifying  weakness  and 
unscrupulous  expedients.  The  statesmen  of  history 
are  as  little  the  types  of  moral  purity  as  the  saints  are 
types  of  practical  sagacity.  A  statesman  in  an  era 
like  this  is  a  man  by  necessity  of  compromise  and 
expedients.  His  agents  he  takes  as  he  finds  them  ; 
and  he  takes  them  with  good  and  bad  together.  And 
when  all  this  is  said,  we  must  judge  them  in  the 
rough  as  they  are.  Energy  and  sagacity,  and  the 
genius  to  give  the  true  lead  to  forty  millions  of  men, 
are  qualities  of  such  transcendent  value  to  mankind, 
that  we  must  hail  them  at  all  costs  wherever  we  find 
them.  And  these  qualities  were  assuredly  in  Leon 
Gambetta. 

I  will  take  but  four  cardinal  facts  about  his  career, 
and  consider  him,  firstly,  as  the  true  creator  of  the 
Republic  ;  secondly,  as  a  type  of  the  statesman  of  the 


ioo  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

people  ;  thirdly,  as  the  representative  of  the  union  of 
order  and  progress  ;  and  fourthly,  as  representative  of 
the  secular  movement  in  politics. 

In  every  one  of  these,  and  in  all  of  them  in 
combination,  Gambetta  is  the  only  French  statesman 
of  the  first  order  whom  this  century  has  produced. 

Of  the  first  order  ?  it  is  asked.  Yes  !  Whatever 
judgment  we  may  pass  on  his  work,  there  can  be  no 
real  dispute  about  his  power.  He  was  hardly  laid  in 
his  grave,  when  the  very  existence  of  the  Republic 
was  suddenly  challenged,  and  through  all  ranks  of 
Republicans  a  sudden  panic  arose,  men's  hearts  failing 
them  for  fear.  A  week  before  his  death,  in  spite  of 
disquiet  and  confusion,  the  Constitution  in  France 
seemed  as  much  a  thing  of  course  as  the  Constitution 
in  England.  A  week  after  his  burial  everything 
seemed  an  open  question  again,  as  on  the  eve  of 
Sedan.  He  is  the  one  Frenchman  whom  the  keen 
statesmen  of  Germany  took  to  be  of  paramount 
importance  to  Germany  ;  he  is  the  one  Frenchman 
who  represented  something  definite  to  every  man 
throughout  the  civilised  world  possessing  the  simplest 
notion  of  politics ;  and  he  was  the  one  Frenchman 
whose  name  and  character  were  known  to  every 
elector  in  France.  The  death  of  Gambetta  was  to 
France  what  the  death  of  Cavour  was  to  Italy  ;  what 
the  death  of  Bismarck  will  be  to  Germany.  At  the 
day  of  his  death  he  filled  the  minds  of  French 
politicians  more  than  Guizot  ever  did,  or  Thiers, 
or  any  of  the  nameless  Ministers  of  empire  and 
monarchy — more  than  Peel  ever  filled  men's  thoughts 
amongst  us,  more  even  than  Gladstone  does  now. 

His  brief  hour  of  office  was  an  interlude.  He  is 
almost  the  one  Frenchman  of  our  times  who  could 
fall  from  office  without  disappearing  from  public  life. 
Office  made  no  difference  to  his  personal  power, 


LEON  GAMBETTA  101 

except  that  it  hampered  it  by  arousing  a  storm  of 
jealousies.  Death,  as  usual,  is  the  true  measure  of 
greatness,  and  death  has  revealed  to  us  with  startling 
force  what  is  the  Republic  with  Gambetta  and  what 
it  is  without  him.  Right  or  wrong,  this  is  power ; 
this  is  one  of  those  pre-eminent  personalities  which 
occur  but  now  and  then  in  a  century.  Here  is  the 
great  man  (it  is  one  of  those  facts  which  we  must 
take  as  facts,  whether  we  like  it  or  not),  and  it  is  with 
justice  that  his  followers  say,  "Here  is  the  man  who 
is  not  of  the  order  of  the  Jules  Favres  and  the  Jules 
Simons,  or  the  Jules  Ferrys,  or  even  of  the  Thiers  and 
the  Guizots — here  is  a  born  leader  of  the  order  of  the 
Dantons  and  the  Hoches." 

I.  Take  him  as  the  creator  of  the  Republic. 
There  were  three  successive  epochs  in  which  Gam- 
betta was  the  true  author  of  the  Republic  :  in  1868-9, 
in  1870-1,  in  1876-8.  For  sixteen  years  the  Empire 
had  lain  like  a  nightmare  upon  France  ;  corrupting  it 
from  above,  crushing  it  within,  weakening  it  without, 
degrading  and  stifling  the  entire  French  nation.  All 
the  better  elements  of  the  people  revolted  ;  all  were 
ready  for  a  resurrection — but  who  gave  the  word  ? 
Always  and  everywhere  Gambetta.  His  energy,  his 
courage,  his  faith  in  the  Republic,  his  scorn  of  the 
Empire,  rang  like  an  electric  shock  through  France. 
In  November  1868,  the  date  of  his  famous  speech 
denouncing  the  Empire,  he  was  a  briefless,  unknown 
barrister.  In  the  early  spring  of  1869  he  was  the 
rival,  the  terror,  and  the  judge  of  the  Empire.  The 
Emperor  in  these  last  two  years  shook  and  cowered 
before  a  young  lawyer. 

It  is  easy  to  say  that  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
Frenchmen  felt  this,  that  Paris  was  seething  with 
insurrection,  and  the  whole  thinking  class,  and  the 
entire  working  class,  was  in  defiance.  True ;  but 


102   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

both  wanted  the  tongue,  the  soul,  the  heart,  and 
they  found  those  in  Gambetta.  The  Jules  Simons, 
the  Rocheforts,  and  Prevost  Paradols,  might  write 
smart  articles ;  Delescluze  and  Blanqui  could  con- 
spire ;  but  neither  epigrams  nor  conspiracies  could 
shake  the  Empire.  It  needed  an  agitator  who  was 
also  a  statesman.  Gambetta  was  both  ;  and  he  struck 
the  Empire  as  neither  fifty  Jules  Simons  nor  a  hundred 
Blanquis  could  strike  it. 

The  Empire  ended,  as  we  know,  in  an  utter 
wreck ;  and  again,  on  the  morrow  of  Sedan,  the 
Republic  was  the  work  of  Gambetta.  He  planned  it, 
he  organised  it,  he  established  it.  In  that  shameful 
overthrow  of  France,  in  the  winter  of  1870,  the  one 
redeeming  effort  stood  out  clear  ;  and  again,  one  man 
alone  struck  the  imagination  of  Europe,  of  Germany, 
of  France.  Such  a  negation  of  all  that  is  sound  and 
manly  as  was  the  Empire,  cannot  afflict  a  people  for  a 
generation  without  leaving  a  heritage  of  blight  and 
corruption  ;  and  with  all  my  love  for  the  French 
name  and  people,  I  cannot  deny  that  in  1870  it  had 
sunk  as  low  as  a  nation  can  sink  without  death. 
From  that  torpor  France  was  saved  by  the  energy 
of  Gambetta.  That  one  man,  a  young,  unknown, 
penniless  lawyer  of  thirty-two,  roused  France  from  her 
slumber,  upheld  her  banner  against  hopeless  odds, 
made  the  French  people  feel  again  they  were  a  people, 
and  planted  in  their  hearts  the  image  of  Republic 
instead  of  Empire. 

Then  it  was  that  the  Republic  was  formed : 
Gambetta's  name  was  made  a  household  word  in 
France.  Into  every  village,  from  Ushant  to  Nice, 
from  Dunkirk  to  St.  Sebastian,  the  conscript  of  1870 
carried  back  the  tale  of  a  leader  who  had  kept  alive 
the  French  name.  Since  the  days  of  the  First 
Napoleon,  no  name  had  ever  penetrated  into  every 


L£ON  GAMBETTA  103 

heart  in  France  as  did  Gambetta's.  He  was  the  one 
man  known  to  all  living  Frenchmen — man,  woman, 
and  child — and  known  as  the  inspirer  of  a  new  sense 
— love  of  the  country.  He  was  the  moral  'inspirer  of 
the  nation  ;  for  he  recalled  the  spirit  of  the  men  who 
fought  at  Valmy  and  Jemappes  ;  nay,  it  is  no  profana- 
tion to  say  it,  he  recalled  Jeanne  Dare  herself.  He 
restored  the  French  nation  to  itself,  giving  France 
back  to  Europe  as  one  of  her  great  forces.  This  is 
the  imperishable  work  of  the  Republic  of  1870  ;  and 
for  this  the  Republic  of  1870  will  be  remembered 
when  Bismarck  and  Moltke  and  the  German  Empire 
are  names  for  historical  research. 

It  failed.  Yes  !  it  failed,  because  the  miserable 
monarchies  and  empires,  which  have  succeeded  each 
other  in  France  since  the  Revolution,  had  crushed  out 
of  Frenchmen  the  national  spirit  ;  and  no  energy  or 
genius  can  make  a  nation  in  an  hour.  But  I  say  it 
advisedly — now  that  twelve  years  have  passed,  and  all 
the  facts  are  known — that  but  for  the  intrigues  and 
fears  of  men  like  Bazaine,  and  Trochu,  and  Thiers, 
and  the  wild  intestine  hatred  that  a  generation  of  civil 
war  had  bred,  and  the  feebleness  and  the  selfishness 
that  a  generation  of  Empire  had  bred,  the  defence 
would  have  succeeded. 

The  Germans  knew  it,  and  feared  it.  It  was 
impossible  for  Germany  to  conquer  France  had 
Frenchmen  been  true  to  themselves.  The  grandsons 
of  the  men  who  had  repelled  Europe  at  five  sides  at 
once  were  conquered  by  a  nation  no  bigger,  and  far 
less  powerful  in  material  resources  than  themselves.  I 
can  never  forget  how  Gambetta  himself  spoke  of  this 
to  me.  In  a  long  conversation  on  the  war,  I  asked 
him  years  after  all  was  over  :  "  Could  then  the  defence 
have  been  continued  in  1871?"  "Certainly!"  he 
groaned  out  bitterly,  crunching  his  clasped  hands. 


104   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

"  Of  course  it  could  !  "  "  Then  why  did  they  give 
in  ?  "  said  I.  "  C'etait  le  coeur  qui  leur  manquait,"  he 
roared  out,  bounding  off  his  seat,  and  his  face  purple 
with  shame  and  rage.  "  Because  they  were  out  of 
heart,"  said  he.  And  I  felt  what  Danton  had  been 
in  '93. 

It  is  said  this  is  not  very  much  to  have  done. 
Gambetta  was  an  eloquent  talker,  and  did  nothing  but 
put  into  eloquent  words  the  thoughts  of  thousands. 
In  one  sense  that  is  true.  The  statesman  ex  hypothesi 
is  not  the  original  thinker  ;  he  is  never  the  lonely  dis- 
coverer of  a  peculiar  truth.  Nor  is  he  the  mere 
mouthpiece  of  other  men's  schemes.  The  man  who 
touches  the  brains  and  hearts  of  his  time  with  that 
sympathetic  and  guiding  note  which  brings  them  to 
one  act  at  the  given  time — the  man  who  makes  the 
current  idea  and  the  dominant  feeling  burn  in  thirty 
millions  of  spirits  at  once,  who  utters  the  true  word  at 
the  right  time — this  is  the  statesman  j  and  the  man  of 
this  sort  is  rare,  and  appears  but  once  in  a  generation 
or  two. 

The  work  of  Gambetta  in  1868,  or  in  1870,  was  in 
the  main  the  work  of  a  single  idea.  His  work  in  1877 
was  far  more  complex,  and  far  more  truly  of  the 
political  sort.  The  great  struggle  in  1877  between 
Despotism  and  Republic — for  that  was  the  true  issue 
then,  as  we  now  see — was  in  a  marvellous  sense  the 
work  of  Gambetta.  The  long  six  months'  struggle 
of  France  with  the  Government  of  Combat,  under 
MacMahon  and  De  Broglie,  the  consummate  skill 
with  which  all  the  Republican  parties  were  restrained, 
sustained,  and  concentrated,  the  order,  self-restraint, 
and  discipline  of  the  country  under  a  series  of  reckless 
provocations,  the  grasp  over  an  intricate  network  of 
electoral  movements  from  one  end  of  France  to 
another,  the  marvellous  success  in  face  of  desperate 


LEON  GAMBETTA  105 

pressure,  the  ease,  order,  and  completeness  of  the 
triumph,  its  liberal  and  noble  spirit,  and  the  rejection 
of  all  vindictive  retaliation — this  was  the  work  of 
Gambetta  alone.  I  was  myself  at  that  time  in  all 
parts  of  France,  and  I  was  in  constant  intercourse 
with  leaders  of  the  movement  in  Paris  and  in  the 
country.  One  and  all  would  say,  "  We  do  not  know 
the  data  ourselves,  but  Gambetta  has  the  whole 
machinery  of  the  party  in  his  hands.  He  knows  the 
facts  in  every  constituency  in  France.  He  has  them 
all  in  his  head  ;  he  assures  us  of  success  ;  and  we  trust 
him."  France  did  trust  him  in  1877;  and  the 
Republic  was  made. 

Thus  three  times  the  Republic  was  due  to  Gam- 
betta :  to  his  audacity  in  1868,  to  his  resolution  in 
1870,  to  his  sagacity  in  1877.  And  to  be  the  fore- 
most bold  man,  the  foremost  resolute  man,  the  foremost 
sagacious  man  of  your  generation,  is  to  be  the  great 
man.  Xo  be  the  great  man  who  founds  the  Republic 
is  to  be  the  man  of  the  century.  I  take  of  this  century 
in  Europe,  Canning,  Peel,  Cobden,  Gladstone,  in 
England  ;  Cavour,  Mazzini,  Garibaldi,  in  Italy ; 
Stein  and  Bismarck,  in  Germany  ;  Deak  and  Kossuth, 
in  Hungary  j  Lincoln,  Grant,  and  Garfield,  in 
America ;  and  I  say  that  the  foundation  of  the 
Republic  in  France  is  a  work  far  greater  and  more 
difficult  than  any  which  they  undertook. 

The  Republic  in  France  is  the  condition  of  all 
progress.  The  old  Europe  of  feudalism  cannot  dis- 
appear, the  new  Europe  of  the  people  cannot  begin, 
till  the  Republic  is  founded.  It  means  the  definite 
extinction  of  hereditary  claims  of  every  kind,  the  final 
admission  of  capacity  and  merit  to  every  function  in 
the  State.  The  Republic  is  the  issue  of  all  modern 
history  since  the  sixteenth  century  ;  it  is  the  condition 
of  all  future  progress  since  the  eighteenth  century 


io6   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

ended.  It  is  the  great  political  problem  of  modern 
Europe  ;  ripe  for  solution  only  in  France :  already 
attained  in  a  modified  form  by  England  ;  still  hovering 
in  the  balance  elsewhere.  But  the  problem  of  the 
nineteenth  century  is  the  establishment  of  the  Republic 
in  France ;  and  the  man  who  as  yet  has  done  most  to 
establish  it  is  assuredly  Leon  Gambetta. 

II.  I  take  him  next  as  the  statesman  of  the  new 
social  strata  ;  and  here  again  it  is  certain  that  no  single 
politician  in  Europe'within  this  century  has  been  at 
once  a  foremost  power  in  Europe,  and  a  man  of  the 
people  in  origin,  habit,  interest,  and  sympathy.  The 
type  of  Lincoln  and  Garfield  is  common  enough  in 
the  United  States.  But  in  Europe,  in  this  century, 
there  has  been  no  other  example.  Men  like  Cavour 
and  Bismarck  are  great  forces  j  but  they  belong  by 
race  and  training  to  the  old  feudal  classes.  Mr.  Glad- 
stone and  Mr.  Disraeli  did  not  belong  to  them  by 
birth  j  but  their  training  and  their  habits  were  as 
much  those  of  the  governing  classes  as  Lord  Derby's 
or  Lord  Salisbury's.  Mr.  Gladstone  has  the  popular 
fibre  and  the  popular  sympathy  ;  but  he  has  never 
abandoned  nor  defied  the  old  aristocratic  orders.  I  do 
not  say  it  would  be  wise  for  an  English  politician  to 
do  so ;  but  in  France  it  is  the  condition  of  true 
Republican  force.  Neither  Thiers,  nor  Grevy,  nor 
any  of  the  elder  statesmen  have  ever  stood  forth  as 
direct  representatives  of  the  people.  Gambetta  alone, 
of  the  men  of  European  position,  has  done  so.  His 
memorable  words,  that  the  Government  of  France 
must  pass  to  new  social  strata,  was  no  idle  phrase. 

Gambetta,  even  if  for  a  moment  he  indulged  in 
luxury,  lived,  and  died,  and  was  buried  the  son  of 
the  grocer  of  Cahors.  He  not  only  felt  sympathy 
with  the  populace,  but  he  never  could  cease  to  be  of 
the  populace  himself.  I  have  seen  him  within  recent 


LEON  GAMBETTA  107 

years  myself  living  like  any  young  beginner  in  litera- 
ture or  science,  as  completely  a  son  of  the  people  as 
when  he  talked  and  laughed  in  the  Caf<£  Procope.  I 
am  far  from  saying  that  this  is  necessary  or  even  desir- 
able in  every  country  in  Europe  ;  but  in  France  it  is. 
The  only  possible  Republican  ruler  in  France  is  the 
man  of  the  people.  And  it  is  of  prime  importance  to 
Europe  to  show  that  the  son  of  a  country  shopman 
can  reach  the  first  place  in  his  country  before  he  is 
forty,  and  without  ceasing  to  be  the  son  of  the  shopman. 
And  here  again  I  say  that  it  is  a  thing  of  great 
moment  in  the  world  that  the  death  of  the  son  of  a 
provincial  tradesman  should  be  an  event  of  European 
importance,  and  that  he  should  have  the  burial  of  a 
chief  of  the  State. 

III.  I  take  him  next  as  the  first  modern  Frenchman 
who  combined  Revolutionary  ends  with  Conservative 
methods — that  is  to  say,  who  was  resolved  to  carry  out 
the  principles  of  the  Revolution,  both  those  of  1789, 
1791,  and  1848,  by  means  of  popular  conviction,  and 
not  by  coups-de-tnain  and  terror.  He  was,  as  no  other 
Frenchman  in  this  century  has  been,  trusted  at  once 
by  the  masses  of  the  cities,  and  by  the  masses  of  the 
peasants.  The  workmen  of  the  great  cities  of  France 
are  at  present  in  a  state  of  revolutionary  excitement ; 
the  peasants  and  farmers  of  the  country  are  the  most 
purely  Conservative  class  in  Europe.  I  mean  by 
Conservative,  averse  to  all  doubtful  experiments, 
whether  backwards  or  forwards.  It  is  quite  true 
that  Gambetta  was  so  Conservative  that  he  had  lost 
a  large  part  of  his  influence  with  the  workmen  of 
Paris  and  Lyons.  He  would  probably,  had  he  lived, 
have  lost  even  more.  But  he  died,  by  free  vote, 
Member  for  Belleville,  the  most  insurgent  quarter  of 
Paris.  He  who  did  this  at  the  same  time  possessed 
the  confidence  of  the  mass  of  the  rural  voters.  This 


io8  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

was  to  unite  Order  and  Progress,  as  no  other  foremost 
politician  of  France  has  ever  done  in  our  time.  They 
have  to  choose  the  one  or  the  other — the  changes 
desired  by  the  mass  of  the  workmen,  or  the  permanence 
loved  by  the  mass  of  the  peasants.  They  are  avowed 
Revolutionists  or  avowed  Conservatives  ;  men  who, 
like  Thiers  and  GreVy,  influence  the  middle  class 
without  influencing  workmen  at  all ;  or  men  like 
C16menceau,  who  lead  the  workmen,  but  not  the  rich 
and  the  peasantry.  Gambetta  was  the  one  French- 
man of  modern  times  who  could  induce  the  Revo- 
lutionists to  follow  constitutional  means  to  their  ends, 
whilst  inducing  the  Conservatives  to  face  and  accept 
a  new  order  of  government.  He  had  founded,  and, 
had  he  lived,  he  would  possibly  have  secured,  what 
M.  Lafitte  has  called  an  organic,  progressive,  Repub- 
lican party. 

He  had  hardly  succeeded,  when  cut  short  in  death. 
Nor  can  we  be  at  all  sure  that  in  any  case  he  would 
have  succeeded  in  his  task.  The  situation  of  France 
is  extraordinarily  difficult ;  one  that  makes  government 
for  the  moment  almost  impossible.  The  democratic 
mania  (and  by  that  I  mean  the  passion  of  groups  and 
of  individuals  to  reject  every  centre  of  power  but  that 
which  promotes  their  own  particular  nostrums),  this 
democratic  frenzy  has  gone  so  far  that  we  may  well 
doubt  if  any  government  by  opinion  is  now  possible. 
Free  government  means  government  by  consent  of 
the  governed  and  by  rational  guidance  of  their  con- 
victions. But  when  a  society  has  got  into  that  state 
that  the  majority  of  energetic  natures  hold  it  as  the 
first  duty  of  a  man  not  to  be  governed  at  all ;  when 
opinion  is  in  that  state  that  in  place  of  rational  con- 
victions society  is  saturated  with  prejudices  incom- 
patible with  each  other,  and  agreeing  only  in  being 
impervious  to  reason  at  all  —  then  government  (by 


LEON  GAMBETTA  109 

conviction  at  least)  is  nearly  a  hopeless  task.  I  am 
not  saying  that  France  has  reached  this  hopeless  state  ; 
but  the  democratic  poison  has  gone  nearly  as  far  as  is 
compatible  with  rational  existence. 

We,  to  whom  the  Republic  is  the  normal  condition 
of  the  most  advanced  civilisation,  who  call  for  a  social 
and  not  a  mere  plutocratic  Republic,  are  as  far  as 
ever  from  the  democratic  system.  Let  us  explain 
these  terms  which  are  used  so  loosely  in  England. 
By  Republican  Government  we  mean  that  govern- 
ment which  represents  the  mass  of  the  people  without 
privileged  families  of  any  kind,  or  any  governing  class, 
or  any  hereditary  office.  It  is  government  in  the 
name  of  the  people,  in  the  interests  of  all  equally,  in 
sympathy  with  the  people  ;  where,  so  far  as  the  State 
is  concerned,  neither  birth,  nor  wealth,  nor  class,  give 
any  prerogative  whatever.  We  mean,  in  fact,  by 
Republican  what  is  on  the  lips  of  all  English  Liberals, 
but  is  so  little  to  be  found  in  the  facts  of  English 
politics.  By  Democracy  we  mean  the  direct  control 
of  the  machinery  of  government  by  all  citizens  equally, 
or  rather,  by  such  of  them  as  can  succeed  in  making 
themselves  heard,  and  for  the  time  paralysing  the  rest. 
This  government  by  everybody  in  turn  is  the  negation 
of  the  true  Republican  Government ;  for  in  place  of 
being  the  government  by  conviction  and  consent  of 
the  people  in  the  interest  of  all,  it  is  the  arbitrary 
enforcement  of  a  set  of  narrow  interests  by  small 
groups  in  endless  succession. 

The  virus  of  democracy  (which,  in  the  sense  in 
which  I  use  it,  is  so  little  republican  or  popular 
government,  that  it  is  rather  a  series  of  impotent 
tyrannies  by  petty  groups),  the  virus  of  democracy 
may  have  gone  so  far  in  France,  that  Gambetta 
would  have  attempted  to  organise  it  in  vain.  Certain 
it  is,  that  with  all  his  democratic  training,  and  all  his 


no   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

democratic  habits,  his  very  existence  was  an  antidote 
to  democracy.  Every  great  personality,  every  national 
reputation,  every  creative  political  force,  is  in  itself 
the  negation  of  democracy.  Democracy,  or  every- 
body ruling  for  his  day  in  turn,  and  in  the  meantime, 
till  his  turn  comes,  furiously  assailing  every  one  whose 
turn  is  come,  is  hushed  into  silence  by  the  very  exist- 
ence of  a  great  man.  A  great  statesman  is  ipso  facto  as 
fatal  to  democracy  as  a  great  general  is  incompatible 
with  mutiny.  I  am  not  speaking  of  England  nor  of 
the  English  Parliament,  where  different  circumstances 
make  different  conditions.  I  am  speaking  of  France 
to-day,  and  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that  her  one 
chance  of  good  government  lies  in  the  hope  that  her 
government  will  assume  a  personal  and  not  a  demo- 
cratic form.  By  personal  I  do  not  mean  despotic  ; 
certainly  not  military,  nothing  imperial,  not  a  rule  of 
bayonets,  and  prisons,  and  exile,  and  the  state  of  siege  ; 
but  the  government  of  a  capable  man  or  men,  freely 
accepted  and  followed  by  the  will  of  an  intelligent 
people.  In  a  way  we  have  something  of  the  kind 
here  ;  in  a  way  they  have  something  of  the  kind  in 
America.  The  great  chance  of  their  having  it  in 
France  lay  in  the  future  of  Gambetta.  I  am  far  from 
saying  that  in  such  a  situation  even  he  would  have 
succeeded  ;  but  his  life  offered  chances  of  such  a  thing 
that  we  look  for  in  vain  in  France. 

Far  be  it  from  me  to  imply  that  we  should  approve 
of  all  his  schemes,  or  even  condone  his  later  policy. 
I  am  free  to  acknowledge  that  of  late  I  have  earnestly 
repudiated  many  leading  features  of  his  policy.  His 
attack  upon  the  Catholic  fraternities,  his  idea  of  a 
State  Church,  of  a  State  education,  of  State  public 
works,  are  contrary,  I  hold  it,  to  any  just  and  radical 
principles  ;  whilst  the  miserable  aggression  in  Tunis, 
and  the  criminal  spoliation  of  Egypt,  fill  us  with  the 


LEON  GAMBETTA  in 

warmest  indignation.  For  the  most  part,  in  the  last 
two  years,  I  have  found  myself  more  often  on  the  side 
of  Clemenceau,  and  heartily  desirous  of  seeing  the 
policy  of  Clemenceau  succeed. 

But  in  the  one  great  necessity  of  France,  the 
formation  of  a  governing  party  or  power,  perfectly 
Republican,  at  once  progressive  and  Conservative,  I 
ask  myself  if  Clemenceau  has  the  prospect  of  succeed- 
ing where  Gambetta  failed.  By  all  means  let  us 
support  him  if  prospect  there  be.  But  I  am  not 
sanguine.  Clemenceau  is  so  far  unable  to  deal  with 
Democracy,  in  that  he  is  himself  a  fanatical  adherent 
of  the  Democratic  creed.  To  him  the  defeating  of 
any  personal  power  is  the  first  duty  of  a  citizen  ; 
whereas  the  formation  of  a  personal  power  is  the  first 
necessity  of  the  Republic.  To  him  Opportunism  is 
the  worst  of  political  crimes  ;  whereas  Opportunism 
is  simply  the  basis  of  all  true  statesmanship.  To  him, 
the  beginning  and  end  of  politics  is  the  logical  fulfil- 
ment of  the  Revolution  ;  whereas  the  condition  of 
fulfilling  the  Revolution  is  to  make  it  the  gradual 
development  of  Order.  On  all  these  grounds,  although 
on  so  many  a  recent  question  I  hold  Cl£menceau  right 
and  Gambetta  wrong,  we  would  have  held  to  the 
party  of  Gambetta  and  not  to  that  of  C16menceau. 
If  we  must  choose  between  the  Irreconcilables  and 
the  Opportunists,  then  Opportunism  means  practical 
government,  and  Irreconcilability  means  a  pedantic 
doctrine.  To  have  thrown  over  Gambetta  for 
Cl£menceau  is  the  very  type  of  the  democratic 
frenzy.1 

The  one  hope  for  France  is  the  rise  of  a  great 

1  How  different  a  man  is  the  C16menceau  of  1908  from  the  Cldmen- 
ceau  of  1883.  Twenty-five  years  of  struggles  and  defeats,  Dreyfus,  and 
sixty-seven  years  of  life  have  turned  the  Opposition  orator  into  the 
successful  statesman  (1908). 


ii2   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Republican  chief.  And  circumstances  had  so  worked 
that  for  the  moment  Gambetta  was  the  only  possible 
Republican  chief.  Power  in  France  rests  in  the  hands 
of  some  seven  or  eight  millions  of  electors  ;  and  these 
seven  or  eight  millions  know  it,  and  mean  to  keep  the 
power.  Since  the  death  of  Louis  Napoleon  and 
Thiers,  Gambetta's  name  was  the  one  name  of  living 
Frenchmen  which  was  known  to  every  one  of  these 
millions.  GreVy's  is  unknown  to  one-third  of  them, 
perhaps ;  the  name  of  Cle"menceau  is  yet  unknown  to 
two-thirds  of  them.  The  extraordinary  events  of 
1870  had  carried  the  name  and  the  fame  of  Gambetta 
into  every  cottage  and  garret  in  France.  Nothing 
that  Clemenceau,  or  GreVy,  or  Jules  Simon,  or  Roche- 
fort,  or  any  one  of  these  could  do,  could  bring  their 
names  or  their  characters  before  the  mass  of  the 
electors.  The  good  sense  of  GreVy,  the  political 
logic  of  Clemenceau,  are  admirable  forces  ;  but  they 
cannot  reach  the  men  who  hold  the  power.  They 
cannot  speak  in  the  tones  which  are  heard  through 
France  ;  they  cannot  rouse  the  ideas  of  the  distant 
sluggish  millions.  GreVy  may  issue  a  hundred 
messages,  and  C16menceau  may  deliver  a  hundred 
speeches,  but  not  one  word  of  these  will  reach  the 
dull  ear  of  the  herdsmen  in  the  Morbihan,  and  the 
vine-dressers  of  the  Gironde,  and  the  woodcutters  of 
the  Jura,  and  the  ploughmen  of  the  Beauce. 

But  when  Gambetta  spoke,  France  heard  it  and 
knew  it,  from  the  North  Sea  to  the  Mediterranean. 
The  stout  farmers  and  the  shepherds  and  the  peasants, 
from  the  Pas  de  Calais  to  the  Pyrenees,  and  the  work- 
men of  Belleville,  and  of  Perrache,  and  of  the  Canne- 
biere,  of  Lille,  and  Bordeaux,  and  Rouen,  and  Havre 
— every  Frenchman  knew  it  and  understood  it,  and, 
more  or  less,  was  moved  or  influenced  by  it.  France 
is  politically  a  bilingual  nation.  One-half  speaks  a 


LEON  GAMBETTA  113 

political  language,  and  lives  in  a  political  world,  which 
is  wholly  unknown  to  the  other.  They  who  address 
one-half  of  the  nation  are  incomprehensible  to  the 
other.  Gambetta  alone  of  modern  Frenchmen  was 
bilingual  too.  He  found  a  language  that  both  under- 
stood, and  he  alone  could  address  France.  He  com- 
bined Order  and  Progress  that  is,  Revolutionary  ends 
and  a  Conservative  spirit.  Here,  then,  was  the  political 
force.  France  is  a  Democratic  Republic,  whose  only 
possible  government  is  a  popular  chief,  Revolutionary 
by  his  genius  and  Conservative  by  his  instincts.  Such 
an  one  was  Gambetta,  and  for  my  part  I  see  no 
other. 

IV.  I  pass  to  the  last  of  the  points  which  remain 
to  notice,  and  my  words  on  this  great  man,  or  this 
great  torso  of  a  great  man,  are  ended.  He  is  the  one 
European  statesman  of  this  century  who  systematic- 
ally and  formally  repudiated  any  kind  of  acceptance 
of  Priesthood.  His  Opportunist  theory  of  a  State 
Church  was  no  doubt  as  wrong  in  principle  as  his 
persecution  of  the  Catholic  Orders.  But  about  his 
formal  rejection  of  all  theology  there  can  be  no  doubt ; 
his  life,  his  death,  his  burial,  all  alike  bear  witness  to  it. 
It  is  common  enough  with  minor  politicians  of  all 
types  in  France.  But  when  we  see  the  way  in 
which  the  responsible  rulers  of  France  have  entered 
into  partnership  with  the  priests,  when  we  remember 
all  that  in  that  line  was  done  by  the  Bourbons, 
Napoleons,  and  Orleans,  by  men  like  Guizot  and 
Thiers,  MacMahon  and  De  Broglie,  we  see  here  a  new 
thing — a  statesman  of  the  first  rank  in  Europe  who 
formally  repudiates  creeds  in  any  shape,  the  first  ruler 
of  PVance  in  this  century  who  has  chosen  to  rule  on 
purely  human  sanctions.  Had  his  rejection  of  theo- 
logy been  simply  negative,  had  he  been  a  mere  sceptic 
like  Thiers,  or  an  empty  scoffer  like  Rochefort,  it 


u4   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

is  little  that  we  should  find  to  honour  and  respect 
in  his  secular  belief.  But  the  soul  of  Gambetta 
was  not  the  soul  of  scoffer  or  sceptic.  He  had  a  re- 
ligion in  his  soul,  though  he  had  neither  God  nor 
saint,  though  he  never  bowed  the  knee  in  the  temple 
of  Rimmon.  His  religion  was  France,  an  imperfect 
and  but  narrow  image  indeed  of  Humanity,  but  a  part 
of  Humanity  and  an  organ  and  an  emblem  of  it. 
His  religious  life,  like  his  political  life,  remained  but 
a  fragment  and  a  hope.  Both  have  closed  at  the  age 
of  forty-four.  What  a  future  might  have  lain  beyond 
had  he  lived  to  the  age  of  Thiers  or  Guizot !  • 

It  is  a  thing  which  the  world  will  remember  one 
day  —  that  vast  ceremony  in  Paris  on  the  6th  of 
January  last — such  a  funeral  as  no  emperor  ever  had, 
a  day  that  recalled  the  gathering  of  the  dawn  of  the 
Revolution  in  1789  ;  when  all  France  helped  to  bury 
the  one  Frenchman  who  stood  before  Europe  as 
Bismarck  and  Gladstone  alone  of  living  men  stand 
before  Europe  to-day,  and  from  first  to  last  in  that 
throng  where  Paris  did  honour  to  the  son  of  the 
dealer  of  Cahors,  no  Catholic  emblem  or  priest  was 
seen  ;  not  a  thought  but  for  the  great  human  loss  and 
human  sorrow,  not  a  word  but  of  human  and  earthly 
hopes.  For  the  first  time  in  this  century  Europe 
looked  on  and  saw  one  of  its  foremost  men  laid  in  his 
rest  by  a  nation  in  grief  without  priest  or  church, 
prayer  or  hymn. 

The  nation  laid  him  in  his  rest  with  an  honour 
that  no  service  could  equal.  For  death  is  peculiarly 
the  sphere  of  the  power  and  resources  of  the  religion 
of  the  future.  It  will  find  for  the  last  offices  of  its 
great  sons  noble  words  and  affecting  ceremonies, 
before  which  the  conventional  requiems  will  sound 
hollow.  It  will  clothe  the  memory  of  the  great  man 
with  all  the  memories  of  the  servants  of  Humanity, 


L&ON  GAMBETTA  115 

whose  work  he  has  helped,  and  whose  great  company 
he  has  joined  at  last.  And  in  the  spirit  of  the 
immortal  traditions  of  patriotic  defence,  let  us 
remember  with  honour  the  great  citizen  who  has 
been  borne  to  the  premature  grave,  wherein  were  laid 
the  unrevealed  future  of  Danton,  and  Hoche,  and 
Condorcet. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ITALY 

(1860) 

The  three  following  studies  on  the  Italian  kingdom  and  its 
makers,  Cavour  and  Garibaldi,  were  the  result  of  visits 
to  Italy  and  intercourse  with  the  leaders  of  the  Nationalist 
cause.  At  Oxford  I  had  been  the  friend  and  pupil  of 
Count  Aurelio  Baffi,  one  of  the  Triumvirs  at  Rome  with 
Mazzini  and  Armellini  during  the  defence  of  the 
Republic  in  1849  under  Garibaldi.  By  Saffi  I  was 
introduced  to  Mazzini,  Campanella,  Pianciani,  and  other 
Italian  exiles,  and  I  travelled  in  Italy  with  introductions 
in  1853  and  1855.  When  the  Italian  cause  was  taken 
up  by  Napoleon  III.  early  in  1859,  I  to°k  deep  interest 
in  the  question,  and  wrote  letters  thereon  in  the  Daily 
News.  This  brought  me  into  relation  with  Francis 
Newman,  Count  Pulszki,  the  friend  of  Kossuth,  G.  J. 
Holyoake,  Count  Pepoli,  and  other  Italianissimi.  Meet- 
ings took  place  in  my  chambers  in  Lincoln's  Inn,  and  we 
projected  the  formation  of  an  Italian  Association  to  pro- 
mote the  cause  by  appealing  to  English  sympathy  in  the 
press  and  by  public  meetings  and  the  Trades  Unions  and 
radical  organisations. 

This  project  was  suddenly  cut  short  by  Napoleon's  aban- 
donment of  the  campaign  by  the  Peace  of  Villafranca  (July 
1859).  In  August  I  started  off  to  Italy  with  ample  intro- 
ductions, and  I  undertook  to  write  letters  to  the  Morning 
Post  and  to  the  Daily  News  as  independent  and  honorary 
116 


THE  MAKING  OF  ITALY  117 

correspondent.  At  Turin  I  made  the  acquaintance  of 
Senateur  Matteucci,  Cavour's  Florentine  associate,  Baron 
Poerio,  the  prisoner  of  Bomba  in  Naples,  Count  Mamiani, 
and  others.  With  introductions  from  them  I  visited 
Genoa,  Leghorn,  Florence,  Siena,  Lucca,  Prato,  Bologna, 
Ravenna,  Modena,  Parma,  Milan,  and  Lugano,  at  each 
place  having  interviews  with  the  local  governments  of  the 
Duchies — Prince  Pepoli,  Baron  Ricasoli,  Farini,  etc.,  ana 
the  chiefs  of  the  'Nationalist  movement.  They  furnished 
me  with  abundant  documents  and  information.  I  also 
saw  the  levies  of  volunteers,  and  met  Garibaldi  in  Romagna 
at  the  head  of  his  own  corps.  The  letters  I  wrote  to  the 
Morning  Post  and  -to  the  Daily  News  were  studied,  I 
understand,  by  Lord  Palmers  ton  and  Lord  John  Russell, 
then  Prime  Minister  and  Foreign  Secretary  respectively. 
These  essays  appeared  in  the  Westminster  Review, 
January  1861,  six  months  before  the  death  of  Cavour 
(1908}. 

• 

IMPERSONATED  under  the  great  names  and  the  marked 
characters  of  Cavour  and  Garibaldi,  there  stand  con- 
fronted the  two  principles  of  policy,  the  aristocratic 
and  the  popular,  the  legal  and  the  revolutionary  ;  and 
the  two  great  parties  of  order  and  of  movement.  Just 
as  the  French  Revolution  was,  though  principally  social, 
yet  in  a  great  degree  national ;  so  indeed  the  Italian, 
though  originally  national,  is  in  no  small  degree  social. 
The  former  commenced  in  the  effort  to  substitute  one 
form  of  society  for  another,  but  it  ended  in  a  struggle 
for  existence  with  its  neighbours.  The  latter  com- 
menced a  struggle  for  national  existence,  which  it 
cannot  carry  to  its  issue  without  calling  into  action 
many  of  those  elements  out  of  which  states  are  com- 
pacted, and  facing  at  least  some  of  the  difficulties  which 
disturb  the  union  and  harmony  of  orders,  classes,  and 
institutions. 

On  the  one  side  we  have  seen  the  action  of  the 


n8   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Government,  or  rather  of  one  pre-eminent  statesman, 
moulding  the  material  and  political  strength  of  a  small 
state  into  one  compact  power  ;  divergent  parties  and 
purposes  welded  into  a  definite  national  policy.  Next, 
the  action  of  an  established  and  strong  system  has 
been  extended  to  foreign  powers,  and  the  whole 
machinery  of  international  statecraft  has  been  moved 
and  guided  by  one  strong  and  practised  hand.  At 
last,  by  a  consummate  stroke  of  daring  and  ingenuity, 
an  auxiliary  of  overwhelming  strength  has  been  in- 
voked to  be  used,  watched,  and  eventually  resisted. 
Beside  which,  a  variety  of  local  revolutions  needed  to 
be  tempered  and  guided  under  legal  forms  and  in  the 
presence  of  retrograde  parties  ;  and  a  work  of  inter- 
necine struggle  carried  out  under  the  jealous  eyes  of 
European  Governments.  The  power  which  could  do 
this  must  above  all  things  have  possessed  patience, 
tenacity,  self-command,  experience,  and  practical 
sagacity,  and  no  small  share  of  those  solid  qualities 
out  of  which  grow  the  orderly  consolidations  of  states. 
Such  an  element  existed  in  the  rich  and  educated 
classes  of  Upper  Italy,  amongst  the  nobility,  the  land- 
owners, the  professions,  and  the  trades  of  the  towns ; 
men  who,  sometimes  pedantic  and  often  overcautious, 
in  the  main  retained  the  respect  and  confidence  of  the 
people,  and  to  a  man  were  ennobled  by  the  national 
sentiment  and  zeal  for  order  and  rational  government. 
Such  men,  whose  services  are  too  much  depreciated 
because  far  from  brilliant,  formed  in  reality  the  strong 
conservative  element  by  which  alone  the  hot  passions 
of  the  time  have  been  mastered  and  guided  ;  and  they 
found  in  Cavour  an  exponent  and  chief  who  as  far 
surpassed  them  all  in  his  instinct  towards  systematic 
and  orderly  organisation,  as  in  his  power  of  grasping 
and  controlling  the  more  vigorous  forces  of  the  revolu- 
tionary element. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ITALY  119 

On  the  other  side  we  have  seen  the  conception  of 
national  existence  matured  and  upheld  through  dreary 
years  of  suffering  by  a  few  brilliant  intellects,  gradu- 
ally growing  up  as  the  religion  of  the  finer  minds, 
until  it  at  last  spread  to  be  the  passion  of  all  that  is 
generous  in  the  national  character.  With  them  it 
became  a  principle  too  sacred  to  be  tampered  with, 
too  vital  to  suffer  excuse  or  delay,  which  demanded 
every  sacrifice  and  was  capable  of  every  achievement. 
These  ardent  spirits  addressed  and  found  response  in 
the  hearts  of  the  people  ;  they  repudiated  the  course 
of  diplomatic  intrigue  as  much  as  that  of  cautious 
legality.  Believing  more  in  enthusiasm  than  in 
organisation,  and  in  self-devotion  than  in  ability,  they 
are  impatient  of  the  delays  and  scruples  of  the  party 
of  order.  Devoted  to  their  principle  of  national  re- 
generation, they  contemn  those  social  influences  which 
unless  in  moments  of  extraordinary  excitement  virtually 
dominate  and  represent  every  society.  They  thus 
quite  misconceive  and  undervalue  the  weight  bearing 
upon  the  future  of  their  country  from  the  will  or 
policy  of  foreign  states,  as  well  as  that  of  the  rich, 
educated,  or  powerful  individuals  at  home.  With 
feelings  which  in  every  great  crisis  do  indeed  make 
the  life  of  national  movements,  they  had  neither  the 
patience  nor  the  judgment  necessary  for  sustained 
preparation,  or  for  handling  complicated  situations  and 
rival  parties.  Besides  which,  they  have  so  little 
sympathy  for  those  sentiments,  interests,  or  habits, 
upon  which  the  order  and  obedience  of  masses  of  men 
repose,  that  they  force  their  own  enthusiastic  ideas 
upon  populations  quite  incapable  of  adopting  them, 
and  govern  alternately  with  untimely  violence  and 
fatal  negligence. 

Such  are  the  elements  which  have  been  at  work 
during  the  whole  of  this  recent  Italian  movement, 


120  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

occasionally  acting  harmoniously  as  one,  then  separ- 
ately but  in  common,  at  times  in  open  hostility  ;  but 
both  indispensable  and  both  inevitable.  Cavour  and 
Garibaldi,  the  leaders  of  these  two  parties,  are  not, 
however,  their  simple  representatives.  To  all  the 
habitual  self-restraint,  the  knowledge  and  patient 
training  of  the  Conservative  classes,  Cavour  adds  the 
full  power  of  conceiving  and  using  the  enthusiasm  of 
popular  feeling.  But  with  all  his  superiority  to  his 
own  order  and  party,  he  does  not  and  cannot  inspire 
in  others  that  passionate  love  of  national  existence, 
that  moral  elevation  of  character,  that  unfaltering  self- 
devotion  and  perfect  simplicity,  which  seem  to  beam 
from  the  countenance  of  the  great  popular  hero. 
With  his  admirable  versatility,  sagacity,  and  know- 
ledge of  mankind,  the  great  minister  has  been  able  to 
conduct  with  consummate  skill  an  undertaking  as 
great  and  difficult  as  ever  fell  to  the  lot  of  a  statesman. 
But  the  very  ability  of  his  combinations  and  devices, 
the  very  brilliancy  of  his  achievements,  has  proved  in 
no  small  degree  fatal  to  the  moral  strength  of  his 
position.  He  has  mixed  himself  up  in  compromises 
and  intrigues,  and  in  deceptions  which,  however 
excusable  in  a  politician,  are  fatal  to  the  honour  of  a 
great  national  regenerator. 

The  services  of  Cavour  to  his  country  have  been 
indeed  indispensable  ;  without  him  neither  the  first 
possibility  of  life,  nor  the  actual  maintenance  of 
existence,  would  have  been  practicable  ;  but  he  is  not 
all,  and  he  needed  a  very  different  colleague.  All  that 
is  wanting  in  Cavour  is  supplied  in  Garibaldi.  Utterly 
incapable  of  civil  administration  as  the  noble  soldier 
has  proved,  he  has  inspired  in  the  heart  of  every  Italian 
emotions  which  no  Government  orator  or  diplomatist 
could  awaken.  When  a  ministry  had  completed  a 
bargain  which  nothing  but  necessity  (yet  unproved) 


THE  MAKING  OF  ITALY  121 

could  excuse,  the  voice  of  the  bravest  of  the  brave  was 
heard  in  the  council  of  the  nation  choked  with  shame 
and  indignation.  That  broken  protest  sank  deep  into 
the  hearts  of  the  people  ;  it  taught  them  to  rely  on 
their  own  sense  of  dignity,  and  not  on  the  hired 
favours  of  strangers.  Again,  when  the  enthusiasm  of 
the  nation  was  sinking  under  the  chilling  process  of 
consolidation  and  diplomatic  manoeuvring,  the  same 
voice  aroused  them  to  a  sense  of  the  task  still  before 
them,  and  awoke  the  stifled  cry  of  national  reunion. 
By  him  the  sense  of  public  honour  and  pride,  wounded 
to  the  quick  by  a  humiliating  sacrifice,  was  again 
called  into  activity.  By  him  also  the  desire  of  national 
existence  has  been  raised  from  a  line  of  policy  into  a 
sacred  duty,  and  patriotism  has  been  elevated  into  a 
religion  by  which  interest,  habit,  and  personal  ambition 
are  to  be  transformed  and  disappear.  Lastly,  it  was 
the  Dictator  alone  who  could  give  to  the  regeneration 
of  Italy  that  character  of  brotherly  reunion,  of  moral 
purification,  of  popular  simplicity  and  intensity,  which 
were  little  dreamt  of  in  the  Cabinet,  the  Court,  or  the 
Parliament. 

Their  country  needed  both.  Each  had  his  own 
great  part  to  bear  in  the  contest.  It  has  not  fallen  to 
the  lot  of  Italy  to  unite  in  one  party,  as  in  our  own 
Revolution,  the  most  fiery  enthusiasm  with  the 
sternest  discipline,  or  to  create  a  leader  who,  like 
Cromwell,  could  be  at  once  the  devotee  of  a  sacred 
cause  and  the  consummate  politician.  With  them, 
principle  and  policy  have  had  a  separate  representative, 
and  the  claims  of  neither  one  nor  the  other  should  be 
exaggerated  or  undervalued.  The  passion  of  the 
soldier  has  been  curbed  by  the  providence  of  the 
statesman,  whilst  the  skill  of  the  minister  has  been 
ennobled  by  the  energy  of  a  hero.  Without  Garibaldi, 
the  intensity  no  less  than  the  character  of  the  popular 


122   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

feeling  was  in  danger  of  being  lost ;  had  he  been 
master,  it  would  have  been  ruined  in  futile  enterprises. 
As  in  every  regular  act,  heart  and  mind  must  concur, 
the  one  to  suggest,  the  other  to  control  j  so  it  has 
been  the  duty  of  the  hero  to  inspire,  of  the  statesman 
to  guide  the  popular  effort.  That  which  the  one  felt, 
the  other  thought ;  the  instinct  of  one  has  been 
matured  by  the  experience  of  the  other.  The  one  has 
made  his  country  respected,  the  other  has  made  it 
honoured  ;  the  one  has  increased  its  power,  the  other 
has  elevated  its  character.  Arm  and  head,  heart  and 
brain,  feeling  and  intelligence,  may  be  contrasted,  but 
cannot  be  separated  without  danger.  It  may  not  be 
possible,  or  even  desirable,  exactly  to  decide  the  share 
which  each  may  have  had  in  a  common  work  ;  but  it 
would  be  a  profound  mistake  to  exalt  one  service  at 
the  expense  of  the  other,  when  both  are  indispensable. 
In  judging  Cavour  we  are  impressed  by  that 
in  which  he  surpasses  all  modern  statesmen  —  the 
faculty  of  prevision.  In  this,  pre-eminently  the  first 
duty  of  a  politician,  the  present  century  has  shown 
no  example  at  all  comparable.1  In  him  alone 
shall  we  find  anything  like  a  systematic  and  patient 
elaboration  of  a  great  national  object.  There, 
at  least,  we  have  an  instance  of  a  Government  far 
ahead  of  its  people,  creating  and  directing  an  active 
public  opinion  towards  one  object,  and  subjecting  the 
whole  of  its  action  to  the  slow  work  of  preparing  for 
a  distant  and  gigantic  enterprise.  For  ten  years  now 
the  whole  public  action  of  Piedmont  —  material, 
political,  and  moral,  in  foreign  as  well  as  domestic 
policy  ;  in  Parliament  as  in  Cabinet,  from  one  end  to 

1  In  1860  Bismarck  was  Ambassador  at  St.  Petersburg,  estranged 
from  the  Prussian  ministry  and  little  known  outside  diplomatic  circles. 
Of  course  he  ultimately  made  an  even  grander  career.  But  his  work  was 
neither  so  difficult,  nor  so  honourable,  nor  so  sagacious  as  that  of  Cavour 
(1908). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ITALY  123 

the  other  of  the  public  service — has  been  centred  in 
the  effort  to  prepare  for  that  part  which  she  has  lately 
been  called  on  to  perform.  It  was  from  the  joint 
action  of  all  these  means — by  diplomacy,  by  public 
opinion,  by  material  organisation,  by  attention  to  the 
finances,  the  army,  the  railways,  the  schools,  the 
ecclesiastical  bodies,  and  the  civil  service  of  the  nation, 
that  Count  Cavour  has  looked  for  the  success  of  his 
undertaking. 

The  history  of  his  administration  affords  a  com- 
plete instance  of  a  statesman  who  works  out  a  profound 
policy  with  unfailing  sagacity  and  determination. 
The  details  of  management  have  been  no  less  admir- 
able than  the  scheme  itself.  The  perfect  publicity 
and  distinctness  of  the  object  sought,  and  the  harmony 
with  which  all  developments  of  national  activity  fell 
into  the  grand  purpose,  is  the  best  proof  of  the  sound- 
ness and  vitality  of  the  policy.  No  other  could  afford 
any  basis  for  sustained  and  combined  action.  Such  a 
type  of  Government  belongs,  indeed,  more  to  the  past 
times  in  which  States  have  been  created,  than  to  these 
latter  days,  in  which  they  are  feebly  or  carelessly 
governed.  It  contains  nothing  of  that  irregular  and 
incoherent  movement  which,  since  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, has  marked  more  or  less  the  European  ministries. 
To  carry  a  few  popular  measures,  to  provide  for  the 
wants  or  dangers  of  the  present,  to  undertake  or 
surrender  a  course  of  action  under  the  sway  of  public 
opinion,  to  assume  in  Europe  that  position  which  for 
the  moment  seemed  most  conducive  to  the  national 
prestige,  has  been  the  crown  of  the  aims  of  any 
modern  ministry. 

The  work  accomplished  by  Count  Cavour  belongs 
rather  to  that  order  of  statesmanship  which  has  created 
nations,  changed  the  future  history  of  Europe,  and 
consolidated  new  eras  of  social  and  political  life.  For 


124   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  true  parallels  or  rivals  to  him,  we  must  look,  not 
amongst  the  Palmerstons  or  Talleyrands,  or  even  the 
Peels  or  Guizots  of  our  day,  but  amongst  the  company 
of  William  of  Orange,  of  Frederick  II.,  and  George 
Washington.  Not  that  he  in  any  great  degree  re- 
sembles any  of  these  great  men  ;  he  may  not  equal 
some  of  them  in  moral  elevation  of  character,  though 
undoubtedly  his  mental  capacities  are  not  wholly 
unequal  to  theirs.  But  it  is  to  the  class  of  great 
creative  statesmen,  and  not  to  that  of  able  adminis- 
trators or  consummate  diplomatists,  that  he  belongs. 
It  is  not  from  such  men  that  we  can  look  for  the 
organisation  of  all  the  conflicting  principles  and  forces 
in  a  highly  cultivated  nation,  and  the  formation  of  a 
great  living  whole  out  of  the  scattered  fragments  of 
an  oppressed  race.  It  is  a  peculiar  genius  for  govern- 
ment which  can  grasp  as  a  central  idea  that  one 
principle  of  action  which  can  alone  give  cohesion 
and  vitality  to  disorganised  communities,  can  make 
it  practical  enough  for  the  most  unenlightened,  and 
broad  enough  for  the  most  aspiring  ;  and  at  the  same 
time  develop  it  in  action  under  all  the  restraints  im- 
posed by  prescription  and  the  sluggishness  which 
timidity  and  selfishness  impose  on  large  classes  of 
mankind.  The  conception  of  national  unity  is  indeed 
primarily  due  to  those  impassioned  thinkers  of  all  schools 
who  upheld  the  sacred  tradition  of  the  Italian  race,  and 
in  perhaps  the  highest  degree  to  that  unhappy  genius 
who  was  himself  the  least  capable  of  creating  it. 

To  Mazzini,  it  is  true,  as  thinker,  poet,  preacher, 
or  agitator — as  indeed  anything  short  of  politician — is 
due  in  this  generation  the  strength  of  that  principle 
which  is  the  very  life  of  Italy  at  this  day.  But  how- 
ever we  admit  his  claims  as  a  teacher,  which  as  a 
conspirator  he  has  done  so  much  to  nullify,  it  is  clear 
that  had  not  Cavour  found  means  to  make  that  notion 


THE  MAKING  OF  ITALY  125 

of  Italian  nationality  patent  to  the  mind  of  all  Europe, 
and  made  it  a  practical  and  intelligible  creed  to  all 
classes  of  Italians,  forcing  the  principle  forward  under 
a  constant  shield  of  order  and  right,  the  very  idea  itself 
would  long  have  remained  in  the  breasts  of  the  small 
circle  of  noble  and  intelligent  spirits.  It  is  not  by 
eloquent  appeals  or  by  desperate  self-sacrifice  that  the 
mass  of  the  public  can  be  penetrated.  It  has  been  the 
task  of  Count  Cavour,  by  a  long  series  of  public  acts, 
all  within  the  sphere  of  sound  and  legal  administra- 
tion, to  awaken  in  the  minds  of  the  great  body  of 
his  countrymen  a  sense  of  national  right,  duty,  and 
dignity,  and  to  conciliate  the  spirit  of  freedom  with 
that  of  subordination  to  one  powerful  will. 

The  difficulties  which  met  Cavour  on  his  first 
accession  to  power  were  such  as  even  now  it  is  diffi- 
cult thoroughly  to  estimate.  The  defeat  of  Novara 
had  left  the  Piedmontese  kingdom  humiliated  and 
weakened,  and  yet  fatally  implicated  in  the  insurrec- 
tionary movement  which  each  succeeding  event  in 
Europe  contributed  to  discredit.  There  the  Church, 
and  a  semi-feudal  landed  aristocracy  possessed  a  strong 
traditional  power.  The  whole  of  the  administration 
of  the  little  State  was  singularly  backward  and  imper- 
fect. Its  legal  and  its  commercial  system,  its  municipal 
institutions,  the  organisation  of  its  army,  of  education, 
of  the  public  service,  and  of  religious  bodies,  its  tariff, 
its  roads,  and  system  of  communication,  and  lastly,  its 
own  national  unity,  were  below  those  of  nearly  every 
other  State  in  the  Peninsula,  except  the  Roman  itself. 
In  the  other  provinces  of  Italy,  monarchical  sentiments 
had  not  begun  to  exist,  and  national  greatness  was 
known  only  in  the  language  of  insurrectionary  appeals. 
All  the  sad  honours  of  the  late  campaign  had  been  won 
by  the  old  municipal  spirit,  and  Manin  and  Garibaldi 
had  upheld  the  glory  of  historic  republics.  The 


i26   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

strength  with  which  upon  the  shattered  efforts  of  the 
national  uprising  the  old  empire  of  the  foreigner  had 
been  established,  had  crushed  out  all  but  the  hope  of 
feeble  palliatives  and  evasions  in  the  minds  of  the  more 
cautious,  and  desperate  conspiracies  in  those  of  the 
bolder.  Parties  were  swaying  between  hopeless  sub- 
mission and  hopeless  rebellion,  amidst  a  state  of  things 
in  Europe  which  seemed  at  each  step  to  be  extinguish- 
ing the  last  embers  of  revolution.  By  degrees  two 
distinct  courses  of  action  became  visible,  and  two  rival 
parties  made  their  existence  felt. 

The  constitutional  or  moderate  party  adopted  one ; 
the  party  of  action  or  the  national  party  the  other.  It 
has  been  the  work  of  Cavour  to  vivify  and  fuse  the 
two.  On  the  one  hand,  the  party  which  comprised 
the  rich  and  noble  classes,  the  more  timid  natures,  and 
the  bulk  of  the  commercial  public,  bowed  down  by 
the  great  calamity  of  the  last  effort,  preached  against 
any  new  risk  or  immediate  action,  looked  only  for  the 
future  to  the  action  of  time  and  increased  intelligence 
in  the  people,  and  hoped  by  patient  conduct  and 
ingenious  management  to  alleviate  rather  than  extin- 
guish the  national  degradation  whenever  the  circum- 
stances of  the  day  or  the  public  opinion  of  Europe 
offered  an  opportunity.  Violently  denouncing  all 
extreme  measures,  and  resolute  to  expose  themselves  to 
no  fresh  disaster,  they  hoped  to  ameliorate  the  position 
of  their  country  by  legal  resistance,  and  by  the  means 
of  those  liberal  institutions  which  survived  the  wreck, 
by  appealing  to  the  public  opinion  and  Governments 
of  Europe,  and  in  particular  by  the  introduction  of  a 
parliamentary  system.  Opposed  to  this  was  the  policy 
of  the  revolutionary  party,  who,  having  their  head- 
quarters at  Milan,  possessed  no  insignificant  strength 
both  at  Genoa  and  Turin.  Under  this  head  belong 
all  those  parties,  whether  republican  or  monarchist, 


THE  MAKING  OF  ITALY  127 

who  looked  forward  to  Insurrection  as  the  means  of 
restitution,  and  laboured  by  conspiracies,  associations, 
and  propagandism  towards  the  freedom  of  the  Italian 
race  by  a  general  explosion  of  revolutionary  energy. 

This  party  indeed  was  animated  by  a  far  deeper 
devotion  to  the  common  cause,  and  felt  more  deeply 
the  miseries  of  the  present,  than  the  supporters  of  the 
more  patient  and  cooler  policy.  They  felt  indeed  the 
immense  necessity  for  action,  and  unhesitating  con- 
fidence in  the  capacity  of  their  race.  They  saw, 
moreover,  the  grand  truth  that  all  the  patience  and 
prudence  of  their  rivals  never  would  result  in  creating 
that  deep  national  enthusiasm  which  alone,  could 
produce  a  restored  nation  ;  and  that  the  future  of 
their  country  could  no  longer  be  left  to  ministerial 
ingenuity,  but  must  be  made  the  first  and  last  of 
public  duties. 

Standing  as  we  do  upon  the  pedestal  of  past  events, 
we  can  now  discern  that  neither  one  policy  nor  the 
other  separately  had  a  chance  of  success.  With  all 
their  efforts  towards  material  and  domestic  advance- 
ment, with  their  old  ideas  of  regular  and  peaceful 
efforts,  the  moderates  could  never  have  awakened  the 
sentiment  of  national  reunion,  or  forced  upon  Piedmont 
the  danger  and  the  glory  of  the  national  chieftainship. 
They  possessed  no  means  and  little  taste  for  reaching 
the  popular  sympathies,  and  were  devoid  of  all  con- 
ception of  a  social  regeneration  as  bound  up  in  the 
national  revival.  Nor  could  their  doctrines  attract  the 
nobler  spirits  or  the  finer  intellects,  whilst  they  com- 
promised with  the  great  end  of  all  political  life. 
Under  their  system  Piedmont  might  have  gone  on  for 
years  increasing  in  ignoble  prosperity,  distinguished 
from  Belgium  or  Holland  by  a  finer  army  or  a  nobler 
soil. 

Nor  did  the  bare  programme  of  the  revolutionists 


128    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

offer  a  more  fortunate  career.  The  long  series  of 
disastrous  insurrections  into  which  the  unhappy 
illusions  of  Mazzini  led  his  generous  but  credulous 
followers,  seems  to  prove  beyond  all  doubt  the  impossi- 
bility of  really  organising  a  national  insurrection  in  a 
country  so  thoroughly  shackled  with  the  sanction  of 
every  Government  in  Europe.  Their  appeal  to  the 
spirit  of  their  countrymen,  whilst  it  does  honour  to 
the  sincerity  of  their  own  devotion,  shows  but  too 
sadly  how  much  they  had  mistaken  the  vis  inertiae  of 
the  bulk  of  the  people.  And  if  to  be  always  fancying 
a  passion  for  national  independence  in  masses  of  the 
country  population,  to  whom  the  very  name  of  Italy 
was  a  word  without  meaning  or  sense,  were  not 
enough  to  condemn  them  as  politicians,  it  was  a  fatal 
delusion  to  be  preaching  insurrection  to  a  people 
amongst  whom  the  rich  and  the  noble  held  the  para- 
mount social  and  political  influence,  classes  who  by  the 
very  conditions  of  their  existence  must  resent  with 
indignation  any  suggestion  or  attempt  towards  revo- 
lutionary or  social  convulsion.  Had  such  a  party 
succeeded  in  establishing  their  supremacy,  the  future 
of  the  Italian  race  would  have  sunk  more  hopelessly 
at  each  successive  disaster  which  they  had  provoked. 
Outcasts  at  once  from  all  the  conservative  elements  of 
their  nation,  and  hunted  down  by  its  oppressors,  they 
would  have  served  only  to  renew  continual  protests 
ever  to  be  extinguished  in  blood.  Discarding,  it  seems 
despising,  that  material  strength  and  organisation 
which  they  did  not,  and  could  not  possess,  and  attri- 
buting to  the  moral  strength  which  they  had  an 
extent  which  was  wholly  delusive,  they  could  do  little 
but  keep  alive  a  sacred  principle  which  they  were 
incapable  of  making  triumphant.  Each  insurrection 
would  have  ended  in  fresh  physical  suffering  and 
deeper  moral  prostration.  Had  Italy  possessed  no  sons 


THE  MAKING  OF  ITALY  129 

but  them,  they  might  have  been  now  wandering  over 
Europe  like  the  Poles,  and  showing  us  that  Italian 
nationality  existed  only  in  the  minds  of  the  thoughtful 
and  the  ardent  as  a  tradition  or  an  aspiration. 

It  has  been  the  task  of  Count  Cavour  to  bring 
about  the  fusion  of  these  two  parties,  each  of  which 
maintained  an  idea  which  was  indispensable  to  real 
success.  The  party  of  order  saw  the  necessity  for 
regular  and  patient  development  of  the  national 
resources  ;  the  party  of  action  the  duty  of  rousing  the 
popular  energy.  From  the  one  he  took  their  notion 
of  the  end,  from  the  other  their  view  of  the  method 
of  national  policy.  With  the  one  he  adopted  as  his 
watchword  the  unity  and  independence  of  Italy,  with 
the  other  he  proclaimed  as  his  policy  the  regular  and 
public  reorganisation  of  the  State.  With  the  one  he 
saw  that  no  genuine  progress  was  possible,  unless  by 
accepting  the  conditions  of  the  political  and  social 
system  existing  ;  with  the  other  he  insisted  that  all 
political  and  material  development  must  be  animated 
by  a  leading  principle,  and  subordinated  to  one  para- 
mount duty. 

Seen  from  a  distance,  his  Government  presents 
itself  to  us  as  one  series  of  sagacious  yet  aspiring 
enterprises.  With  every  fresh  success  he  has  risen  in 
audacity  and  vigour,  until  we  have  seen  at  last  the 
revolutionary  energy  of  the  outlaw  matched  by  that  of 
the  responsible  minister.  He  has  shown,  indeed,  that 
a  great  revolution  can  be  carried  out  without  a  reckless 
use  of  convulsive  measures,  but  not  without  rising  to 
a  true  conception  of  all  the  forces  in  society  which 
underlie  its  external  forms  and  laws.  He  has  carried 
out  the  work  of  Italian  nationality  by  repudiating,  on 
the  one  hand,  the  desperate  aid  of  mere  insurrection, 
but  on  the  other  not  without  boldly  advancing  on  the 
path  of  organic  revolution. 

K 


130   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


CAVOUR 

The  career  of  Count  Cavour  exhibits  the  somewhat 
unusual  case  of  a  politician  who  grows  less  and  not 
more  conservative  by  experience.  His  progress  has 
been  one  from  unobtrusive  administrative  and  economic 
studies  to  the  conduct  of  astounding  revolutionary 
movements.  First  he  is  the  industrious  writer  on 
financial  operations,  then  the  minister  of  material  and 
political  reforms,  lastly  the  leader  of  a  nation  in  a 
struggle  for  existence.  There  was  little  in  his  early 
life  to  foreshadow  the  formidable  character  in  which 
he  now  appears. 

Almost  the  first  act  which  it  fell  to  his  duty  to 
carry  out,  the  commercial  treaty  with  France,  was  an 
emblem  of  his  whole  subsequent  system.  By  that 
treaty,  indeed,  Piedmont  surrendered  far  more  advan- 
tages than  she  obtained  ;  but  she  obtained  from  it  the 
priceless  gain  of  the  foundation  of  a  French  alliance. 
In  the  words  in  which  the  minister  defended  his  policy 
in  Parliament  we  have  indeed  the  key  of  his  whole 
career,  a  reorganisation  of  the  whole  strength  of  the 
country  to  be  combined  with  foreign  alliances  as 
the  basis  of  a  national  war.  "  To  this  treaty,"  said 
he,  "  we  are  moved  by  considerations  superior  to  any 
economical  or  administrative  interest.  A  crisis  may 
yet,  and  probably  will  soon  arise  in  which  Sardinia 
might  need,  if  not  the  material,  at  least  the  moral 
support  of  France.  This  treaty  may  not  give  us  all 
the  financial  advantages  which  we  have  a  right  to 
expect,  but  it  will  strengthen  that  precious  union 
which  ought  to  exist  between  the  free  peoples  of  the 
west  of  Europe."  It  was  the  same  idea  to  which 
belong  all  those  commercial  treaties  which  marked 
the  year  1851,  with  Belgium,  England,  Switzerland. 


CAVOUR  131 

Greece,  the  Zollverein,  and  Holland.  By  them, 
together  with  the  second  convention  with  France,  an 
entire  revolution  was  introduced  in  the  fiscal  system 
of  the  kingdom,  and  Piedmont  took  her  place  as 
a  Free  Trade  State  in  a  manner  to  which  no  other 
continental  power  could  pretend.  The  sagacity  of 
these  measures  has  indeed  been  amply  proved  by  an 
increased  and  increasing  revenue ;  by  the  stimulus 
given  to  production,  and  the  development  of  material 
prosperity. 

But  it  is  to  take  a  very  narrow  view  of  his  policy 
to  suppose  that  it  was  as  a  free-trader,  or  economist, 
that  Count  Cavour  carried  out  these  measures.  They 
are  political  no  less  than  commercial  measures.  Their 
prime  object  was  to  introduce  Sardinia  as  the  equal  of 
the  enlightened  and  progressive  States  of  Europe,  to 
ensure  the  moral  support,  if  not  the  actual  alliance,  of 
France  and  England,  to  raise  the  country  up  out  of 
the  catalogue  of  obscure  or  satellite  kingdoms,  and 
invest  her  in  the  eyes  of  her  citizens  and  of  all  Italians 
with  a  European  dignity  and  importance. 

Nor  was  this  idea  less  conspicuous  in  any  of  those 
administrative  reforms  under  which  the  whole  organ- 
isation of  the  country  has  so  marvellously  expanded. 
That  system  of  railways  which  is  now  the  completest 
which  any  Continental  State  can  show,  if  not  quite  so 
thickly  set  as  the  Belgian  or  the  English,  possesses  a 
symmetry  and  a  common  design  which  show  the  work 
of  a  dominant  purpose  directing  their  whole  extent. 
There  is  something  quite  strategic  in  their  plan,  and 
we  see  them  laid  out  as  in  the  array  of  an  army  with 
a  first  and  second  line  of  defence  ;  a  double  communi- 
cation between  the  strong  stations,  and  a  general  con- 
centration of  the  whole.  And  the  providence  and 
value  of  this  work  was  abundantly  manifested  in  the 
recent  campaign,  where  we  saw  Turin  saved  from 


132   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

invasion,  and   gigantic   manoeuvres  executed    by   the 
sole  agency  of  this  new  engine  of  war. 

It  is  again  to  the  same  general  policy  that  so  many 
of  the  other  labours  of  that  ministry  belong :  the 
postal  conventions  with  the  other  States  of  Italy,  by 
means  of  which  Piedmontese  journals  and  information 
penetrated  the  Peninsula  ;  the  reconstruction  and  re- 
organisation of  the  mercantile  and  naval  ports,  the 
reform  of  the  finances,  of  the  banks,  the  re-assessment 
of  the  land-tax.  Finally  came  that  by  which  the 
ministerial  policy  was  to  find  its  weapon — the  entire 
reorganisation  of  the  army,  and  the  systematic  arma- 
ment of  the  fortresses  which  formed  the  key  of  the 
internal  defence.  It  was  by  this  series  of  adminis- 
trative reforms,  and  the  energy  and  sagacity  displayed 
in  such  repeated  instances  of  sound  practical  states- 
manship, that  the  great  bulk  of  the  nation  gradually 
came  to  place  its  confidence  in  a  minister  who  had  so 
strikingly  increased  the  prosperity  and  activity  of  the 
country.  But  if  the  policy  of  Count  Cavour  had 
rested  there,  he  might  have  been  the  organ  of  the 
Conservative  classes,  without  ever  becoming  the  chief 
of  the  active  energy  of  the  progressive.  It  was 
necessary  to  assume  an  attitude  which  could  arrest 
the  imagination  and  appeal  to  the  heart  of  the  bulk  of 
the  nation,  Italian  as  well  as  Piedmontese.  He  must 
proclaim  a  principle  which  could  really  enlist  that 
smouldering  but  irresistible  force  of  resistance,  and 
unite  in  one  battle-cry  the  unguided  will  of  thousands 
of  ardent  spirits.  To  satisfy  and  to  restrain  the 
passionate  hopes  of  men  to  whom  fear  and  despair  were 
unknown,  and  soothe  the  heaving  agitation  of  over- 
goaded  populations,  needed  some  more  powerful  engine 
than  financial  arrangements  or  amended  tariffs.1 

1  It  will  be  remembered  that  the  whole  of  these  remarks  applies  to 
the  condition  of  Italy  in  1860  (1908). 


CAVOUR  133 

To  exist,  Piedmont  must  head  the  revolution.  It 
was  this  which  none  of  the  leading  men  of  the  country 
seemed  adequately  to  conceive.  It  was  this  which 
has  been  the  basis  of  Cavour's  policy.  Slowly  he 
began  to  announce  a  more  energetic  system. 

The  diplomatic  struggle  with  Austria  in  defence 
of  the  Lombard  exiles  whose  property  had  been 
sequestered,  first  exhibited  him  in  the  arena  of 
European  politics,  and  gave  its  true  stamp  to  his 
policy.  Then  Italians  for  the  first  time  saw  the 
audacity  and  skill  with  which  the  minister  could  meet 
the  high-handed  violence  of  the  great  Empire.  When 
after  the  failure  (at  least  outwardly)  of  the  most  power- 
ful appeals  and  protests  to  Austria,  the  Sardinian  envoy 
was  withdrawn  from  Vienna,  the  full  significance  of 
the  struggle  became  manifest.  It  was  a  great  step 
thus  to  have  met  the  common  enemy  with  a  defiance, 
and  to  have  pronounced  before  the  public  opinion  of 
Europe  a  crushing  indictment,  and  carried  off  the 
approval  of  the  Governments  of  England  and  France. 

But  there  was  an  enemy  at  home  yet  nearer  than 
the  Austrian  whom  it  was  necessary  to  humble  and 
defy.  Whilst  the  Papal  Church  retained  its  prestige 
and  organisation,  the  union  and  independence  of  Italy 
were  alike  impossible. 

Rome  yet  possessed  the  strength  to  impede  every 
step  towards  national  greatness,  and  the  strength  of 
Rome  lay  in  the  monastic  orders.  It  is  a  singular 
fact  that  during  the  provisional  regime  in  Tuscany 
and  the  Duchies  of  Central  Italy,  the  feelings  of  the 
clergy,  and  with  them  of  the  rural  populations,  were 
seen  to  vary  exactly  in  proportion  to  the  numbers  and 
power  of  the  monastic  bodies.  To  strike  down  and 
shatter  this  priestly  army  was  the  object  achieved  with 
entire  success  by  the  conventual  legislation  by  which 
all  orders  not  engaged  in  preaching,  teaching,  or  heal- 


134   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

ing  were  suppressed.  By  this  measure  the  Papacy 
was  humiliated  and  its  strength  crippled.  The 
rapidity,  firmness,  and  moderation  with  which  this 
great  social  change  was  effected  (unattended  by  any  of 
those  evils  which  have  too  often  followed  upon  such 
an  act),  showed  the  minister  superintending  without 
a  single  failure  a  real  revolution  in  society,  and  con- 
ciliating the  strict  claims  of  law,  property,  and  order 
with  a  scheme  involving  a  most  organic  change  and 
kindling  opposite  passions. 

Neither  the  fury  of  the  Catholic  party  nor  the 
excitement  of  their  extreme  opponents  could  shake 
the  Government  from  its  policy  of  long -matured 
advance.  The  part  which  this  measure  alone  has 
played  in  the  recent  agitation  towards  annexation 
to  Sardinia  is  very  remarkable.  Both  sides  feel  its 
significance,  and  the  resolution  and  boldness  displayed 
in  it  by  the  ministry  as  much  added  to  their  strength 
as  the  senile  anathemas  of  the  Vatican  exposed  and 
degraded  the  Catholic  party. 

The  material  strength  of  the  country  having  been 
thus  raised  to  the  highest  efficiency,  and  the  domestic 
enemies  effectually  subdued,  Count  Cavour  was  pre- 
pared to  enter  upon  that  branch  of  his  policy  which 
involved  the  active  co-operation  of  the  European 
powers.  The  war  against  Russia  offered  the  means, 
and  even  made  necessary  immediate  action.  The 
opportunity  was  given  of  at  once  entering  into  the 
circle  of  the  European  States,  whilst  the  late  outbreak 
at  Milan,  and  the  evident  excitement  of  the  republican 
party,  proved  the  danger  of  a  policy  of  inaction.  Count 
Cavour  accordingly  offered  to  the  allies  the  vigorous 
co-operation  of  the  Sardinian  State,  and  despatched  a 
force  which  nearly  equalled  and  at  one  time  exceeded 
that  of  the  British  army.  By  this  enterprise  the 
ambition  and  self-reliance  of  the  army  were  awakened, 


CAVOUR  135 

great  impulse  was  given  to  its  organisation  and 
strength,  the  disaster  of  Novara  was  blotted  out, 
and  the  credit  of  Piedmont  again  placed  beyond  a 
rival  in  Italy. 

It  was  by  its  indirect  rather  than  by  its  direct 
consequences  that  this  measure  must  be  judged.  The 
alliance  with  England  and  France,  by  which  the 
Sardinian  territories  were  actually  guaranteed  during 
the  war,  and  which  promised  for  many  years  the 
closest  relations,  at  once  raised  the  little  kingdom 
into  a  European  Power.  The  moral  effect  of  the 
protest,  uttered  at  the  Congress  of  Paris,  formed  a 
real  step  in  the  history  of  Italy  ;  nor  was  the  language 
of  the  minister  in  the  Parliament  other  than  was  justi- 
fied by  facts  :  "  From  henceforth  the  Italian  question 
has  entered  on  the  order  of  European  questions.  The 
cause  of  Italy  has  been  maintained,  not  by  demagogues 
and  revolutionaries,  but  by  the  plenipotentiaries  of 
France  and  England.  From  the  Congress  it  has 
passed  to  the  tribunal  of  public  opinion.  The 
struggle  will  be  long,  and  need  prudence  and 
calmness  ;  but  our  cause  will  triumph." 

Indeed  the  State  papers  which  that  occasion  drew 
forth  before  the  public  attention  of  Europe,  were 
such  as  possessed  no  ordinary  significance.  That 
presented  to  the  allied  powers  in  April  1856,  by  the 
vigour  of  its  attack,  by  its  unanswerable  logic,  and 
still  more  by  the  perfect  moderation  of  its  tone,  could 
not  fail  to  place  the  Italian  question  in  a  new  light, 
and  force  upon  the  most  conservative  minds  in  Europe 
the  necessity  for  acquiescing  in  important  change. 
The  conflict  waged  in  the  field  as  well  as  that  in  the 
council  sank  deeply  into  the  minds  of  the  whole  Italian 
race,  the  former  chiefly  into  that  of  the  people,  the 
latter  into  the  convictions  of  thinking  men.  And  if 
in  the  recent  elevation  of  Sardinia  to  the  chieftainship 


136   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  the  nation,  we  see  the  influence  of  the  glory  of  the 
Crimean  campaign,  we  see  in  it  no  less  the  impression 
caused  on  the  more  vigorous  of  the  older  parties  by 
the  attitude  which  the  kingdom  had  assumed  in  the 
councils  of  Europe.  This  it  was  that  gave  the  minister 
the  support  of  the  republican  and  purely  revolutionary 
chiefs.  Now  they  saw  opening  to  them  a  real  prospect 
of  achieving  by  some  not  distant  effort  the  entire 
emancipation  of  the  country  with  the  sanction  and 
even  the  co-operation  of  some  of  the  European  powers. 
Then  they  began  to  see  the  real  drift  of  a  policy  which 
looked  forward  to  national  independence,  not  by  setting 
up  Piedmont  as  a  fortunate  model  for  imitation  or  an 
example  of  prudent  resignation,  but  by  training  her 
whole  energies  for  the  hour  of  national  struggle,  and 
preparing  the  way  for  success  by  a  hearty  co-operation 
of  parties  and  long-sighted  combination  of  European 
policy. 

With  regard  to  this  participation  of  Piedmont  in 
the  Crimean  war  very  opposite  judgments  have  been 
formed.  It  may  be  said  with  much  force  that  to 
declare  war  with  a  friendly  power  which  menaced  no 
possible  right  or  interest  of  the  State,  to  burden  the 
struggling  resources  of  the  country  with  a  new  and 
indefinite  weight,  to  have  rushed  unprovoked  into  the 
midst  of  a  gigantic  struggle  ;  in  a  word,  to  have  under- 
taken a  distant  war  for  the  sole  purpose  of  deriving 
therefrom  glory  and  alliances,  was  an  act  of  very 
doubtful  prudence,  and  of  hardly  doubtful  morality. 

Right  or  wrong,  the  war  resulted  almost  as  a 
necessity  from  the  part  which  Sardinia  had  under- 
taken. To  maintain  her  very  existence  and  tranquillity 
she  was  forced  to  show  herself  prepared  for  a  speedy 
struggle  with  the  Austrian — to  enter  upon  that  struggle 
with  a  chance  of  success  she  needed  at  least  the  moral 
support  of  the  Western  Powers — and  that  support  she 


CAVOUR  137 

could  not  hope  to  obtain  unless  by  boldly  identifying 
herself  with  their  foreign  European  policy.  The 
Lombard  campaign  was  only  possible  after  the  Con- 
gress of  Paris,  and  admission  to  the  Congress  would 
have  been  impossible  had  it  not  been  for  the  victory 
on  the  Tchernaia.  It  may  be  that  the  task  of 
national  regeneration  is  one  which  after  all  the  sword 
is  not  competent  to  effect ;  but  so  far  as  force  or 
policy  could  effect  it,  the  work  has  been  most 
thoroughly  successful,  and  if  the  Crimean  expedition 
was  one  which  by  itself  has  no  adequate  justification 
of  right,  it  has  been  at  least  gilded  over  by  amazing 
results,  and  received  a  certain  consecration  from  the 
cause  which  it  has  so  incalculably  served. 

The  work  hitherto  had  been  one  only  of  prepara- 
tion for  the  struggle.  The  time  was  come  for  the 
actual  effort.  The  aid  of  France  was  sought,  and 
obtained.  Nothing  could  be  a  greater  mistake  than 
to  regard  the  interference  of  France  as  the  result  of 
an  individual  impulse  of  the  Emperor,  or  any  special 
manoeuvre  of  the  minister.  It  is  bound  up  with  the 
whole  system  of  Count  Cavour's  policy,  of  which  it 
forms  the  crown.  By  it  that  policy  must  stand  or 
fall.  With  reference  to  that  his  public  acts  must  be 
explained  and  judged.  Imminent  as  that  French 
intervention  was  in  1848,  with  the  whole  course  of 
events  leading  up  to  it  over  a  period  of  ten  years, 
popular  as  the  object  of  the  war  was  in  France,  it 
must  be  looked  on  even  more  as  the  issue  of  the 
situation  of  affairs  in  Europe  than  of  any  individual 
will,  however  powerful  and  apparently  capricious,  and 
as  having  justified  the  sagacity  of  Lord  Palmerston, 
who  wrote  in  November  1848,  "The  glory  of 
delivering  Italy  to  the  Alps  from  the  Austrian  yoke 
will  compensate,  in  the  eyes  of  the  French  people, 
many  sacrifices  and  great  efforts.  The  opportunity 


138    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

for  invoking  French  intervention  in  Italy  will  not 
long  be  wanting.  The  Lombards  would  be  ready  to 
furnish  it  directly  they  knew  that  the  Government 
and  people  of  France  were  disposed  to  answer  the  calL 
It  is  hardly  possible  to  imagine  that  an  Austrian  army 
could  resist  a  numerous  and  powerful  French  army, 
seconded  and  supported  by  a  general  rising  of  the 
Italians."  In  any  case,  such  an  alliance  was  the  con- 
summation of  the  policy  of  Count  Cavour.  Under 
his  hands  Piedmont  had  undertaken  to  solve  the 
national  difficulty.  She  was,  indeed,  impelled  to  it 
by  a  fatal  necessity  to  preserve  at  once  her  independ- 
ence, her  tranquillity,  and  her  throne.  Had  not, 
indeed,  the  upper  classes  under  their  noble  chief 
placed  themselves  at  the  head  of  the  national  move- 
ment, their  power  would  in  a  few  years  have  been 
wrenched  from  them  by  the  party  of  the  revolution  to 
renew  the  policy  and  disaster  of  Novara.  What,  then, 
were  the  means  by  which  the  end  was  to  be  obtained  ? 
The  last  campaign  has  proved  how  utterly  power- 
less would  have  been  the  most  desperate  efforts  of 
Sardinia  alone  against  the  entire  force  of  Austria. 
Nor  were  we  to  add  to  these  efforts,  as  the  revolu- 
tionary party  insist,  the  insurrection  throughout  Italy  ; 
it  is  not  easy  to  assert  that  it  would  have  improved 
the  chances  of  national  success.  This  could  not 
escape  the  eye  of  the  man  who  had  evoked  and 
weighed  the  resources  of  his  country,  whilst  he 
repudiates,  and  perhaps  undervalues,  the  power  of 
insurrection.  He  was  forced  then  to  look  for  some 
external  assistance  ;  nor  is  it  conceivable  that  he  could 
have  persisted  in  a  long  course  of  provocation  and 
defiance  of  the  common  enemy  with  the  ultimate 
intention  of  commencing  war  with  no  forces  but  the 
compact  army  of  the  king,  and  the  desultory  fury  of 
unarmed  populations.  Such  an  idea  is  as  much  con- 


CAVOUR  139 

tradicted  by  the  character  of  the  man,  as  by  the  whole 
history  of  his  acts.  Some  external  aid  was  indispens- 
able. It  presented  itself  only  in  two  forms. 

Italy  might  meet  Austria  either  with  the  assistance 
of  one  or  more  of  the  Western  Powers,  or  might  wait 
until  she  was  a  prey  to  the  mortal  throes  of  revolution 
within.  Even  now,  as  we  witness  the  slow  dissolution 
of  that  tenacious  power  struggling  so  long  after  a 
death -wound,  we  cannot  fail  to  see  that  to  have 
waited  for  that  crisis  might  have  been  to  wait 
until  safety,  honour,  and  self-respect  had  been  lost  at 
home.  Each  fresh  act  of  provocation  thrust  Sardinia 
nearer  to  the  inevitable  conflict,  and  necessitated  a 
still  bolder  act  to  confirm  and  extend  the  prestige  of 
the  last.  Sardinia  was  forced  by  an  irresistible  power 
to  advance  incessantly  upon  a  path  where  success  was 
only  possible  at  the  price  of  invoking  the  assistance  of 
the  foreigner.  To  have  relied,  as  the  revolutionary 
party  insist,  upon  the  unaided  strength  of  Italy,  means 
simply  to  have  submitted  to  an  internal  revolution  as 
a  preparation,  and  to  have  established  a  democratic 
republic  upon  the  ruins  of  all  those  conservative 
elements  of  the  country,  and  of  the  consolidation  of 
the  social  system,  out  of  which  alone,  as  we  conceive, 
permanent  success  was  possible.  Italia  fara  da  se  was 
the  watchword  of  Mazzini  at  the  opening  of  the  war. 
But  the  very  weapon  with  which,  as  he  conceives, 
she  ought  to  fight — the  insurrection  after  the  model 
of  the  year  1793 — involves  the  previous  suppression  of 
the  whole  force  of  the  upper  classes,  to  whom  such  a 
weapon  is  abhorrent  and  self-destructive. 

To  the  Western  Powers,  then,  or  more  distinctly 
to  France,  Count  Cavour  directed  his  hopes.  Hazard- 
ous as  the  cast  was,  it  cannot  be  proved  to  have 
been  desperate.  All  those  advantages  which  it  seemed 
to  offer  have  been  obtained  from  it ;  and  very  few  of 


1 40   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  evils  which  were  foretold  have  come  to  pass.  He 
cannot  be  said  to  have  conjured  a  spirit  which  he  was 
unable  to  control  or  to  resist ;  nor  can  any  reasonable 
mind  assert  that  the  loss  of  Nice  counterbalances  the 
creation  of  Italy.  It  may  be  that  the  recent  war  has 
not  adequately  solved  the  difficulty.  The  assistance 
of  France  may  have  produced  a  moral  injury  to  the 
future  of  Italy.  But  all  such  evils  were  involved  in 
any  possible  course  of  active  effort.  No  conceivable 
policy,  in  such  a  case,  could  have  been  without  its  own 
inherent  defect.  It  may  be  that  the  European  states- 
man, or  even  the  Italian  patriot,  might  deplore  the 
intervention  of  France  ;  but  it  would  be  preposterous 
to  condemn  a  great  practical  politician  from  seizing 
the  only  available  engine  of  acting  on  the  immediate 
destinies  of  his  country. 

The  assistance  of  the  foreigner  having  been  decided 
upon,  the  task  before  Count  Cavour  was  to  direct  the 
Italian  revolution  by  means  of  conservative  authorities, 
and  with  the  least  possible  risk  of  political  or  social 
convulsion,  and  at  the  same  time  to  call  out  the  whole 
warlike  energy  of  the  nation.  It  must  be  admitted 
that  he  succeeded  far  better  in  the  former  than  in  the 
latter  portion  of  his  duty.  The  liberated  populations 
exhibited  indeed  far  more  sagacity  than  energy,  and 
finally  achieved  their  freedom  by  a  fortunate  deficiency 
of  vehemence  and  excitement.  It  cannot  be  doubted 
that  an  almost  suspicious  reliance  was  placed  upon 
order  and  diplomacy.  The  fact  is  that  the  whole 
conduct  of  the  movement  had  been  placed  in  the 
hands  of  the  recognised  heads  of  the  social  system,  and 
was  left  to  the  upper  classes  to  direct  by  skill  without 
any  admixture  of  revolutionary  convulsion.  This  was 
especially  obvious  in  Tuscany  (which  was  but  a  type 
of  the  other  provisional  Governments),  where  the 
entire  guidance  was  placed  in  the  hands  of  a  real 


CAVOUR  141 

aristocracy  of  birth  and  wealth,  of  men  possessing  the 
leading  territorial  and  social  influence  in  the  country, 
full  of  the  conservative  instincts  of  an  educated  and 
historic  order,  and  united  by  long  study,  and  an 
almost  pedantic  trust  in  the  machinery  of  orderly  and 
systematic  government. 

Such  as  the  Tuscan  rulers  were,  such  were  the 
Parmesan,  the  Modenese,  and  the  Bolognese,  in  a 
greater  or  less  degree  ;  and  the  whole  of  these  govern- 
ments were  created  under  the  influence,  and  in  most 
cases  by  the  direct  act,  of  Count  Cavour,  and  were 
even  after  his  fall  inspired  mainly  by  his  counsels,  and 
held  together  by  the  National  Society  which  was  the 
organ  and  promoter  of  his  peculiar  views  and  policy. 
The  exigencies  of  the  situation  had  all  been  foreseen 
and  provided  for  by  the  minister,  and  he  relied  for  the 
success  of  the  revolution  to  be  accomplished  under 
the  shield  of  France  exclusively  on  the  strength, 
authority,  and  ability  of  the  conservative  and  wealthy 
classes,  assisted  by  all  the  educated  intelligence  which 
they  could  command.  It  is  true  that  but  for  a  bolder 
and  less  far-sighted  effort,  the  population  of  Central 
Italy  might  have  sunk  from  want  of  military  energy 
and  enthusiasm  ;  but  it  is  not  the  less  true  that  the 
whole  attitude,  sobriety,  and  pertinacity  of  the  resist- 
ance they  made  to  the  Peace  of  Villafranca  was 
directly  due  to  the  sagacity  of  the  statesman  who  had 
placed  the  direction  of  a  revolution  in  the  hands  of 
men  who  belonged  to  the  party  of  order  by  instinct, 
position,  and  education. 

More  recent  events  have  shown  Count  Cavour 
assuming  a  bolder  attitude,  and  earning  almost  the 
name  of  a  revolutionary  leader.  The  connivance  in 
the  attempt  of  Garibaldi,  and  the  invasion  and  annexa- 
tion of  the  Papal  and  Neapolitan  territories,  belong 
wholly  to  the  policy  of  a  man  who  had  risen  to  a  full 


142   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

sense  of  a  critical  situation.  The  manner  in  which 
he  has  used,  aided,  and  then  controlled  Garibaldi ;  the 
skill  with  which  the  republican  energy  has  been  let 
loose,  to  be  at  the  very  moment  of  destruction  reined 
in  and  pacified  ;  the  audacity  with  which  a  startling 
onslaught  was  made  upon  the  Head  of  the  National 
Church,  and  a  friendly  monarch  attacked  and  besieged, 
without  on  the  one  hand  calling  forth  revolutionary 
passions,  or  on  the  other  the  hostility  of  jealous  foreign 
powers,  is  undoubtedly  a  proof  of  political  aptitude, 
such  as  makes  the  turning-point  in  the  destinies  of  a 
nation.  In  these  later  enterprises  the  true  force  of 
the  statesman's  capacity  is  seen,  for  they  exhibit  him 
as  the  chief  of  a  revolution  of  which  he  has  hitherto 
appeared  mainly  as  the  controller. 

Schemes  such  as  these  belong  to  those  exceptional 
crises  in  which  a  statesman  must  rise  above  the  rules 
of  prudence,  legality,  and  moderation,  or  be  irretrievably 
lost,  and  act,  if  he  acts  at  all,  in  a  full  consciousness 
that  the  safety  of  the  people  is  above  all  law.  It  is  by 
such  acts  throughout  history  that  the  existence  of 
nations  has  been  preserved  by  men  who  have  broken 
through  at  once  all  the  habits,  traditions,  and  laws  of 
society,  under  the  overwhelming  duty  of  the  salvation 
of  the  nation.  Men  will  always  be  found  to  object  to 
Cromwell  violations  of  the  constitution  ;  to  Danton 
suppression  of  law  ;  to  William  the  Silent  duplicity 
and  intrigue  :  but  politicians  must  be  judged  by  their 
power  of  commanding  the  crisis  in  which  they  are 
placed,  and  the  average  of  their  good  and  evil  must  be 
struck  by  the  practical  necessities  of  their  task.  On 
any  politician  who  dares  to  violate  constitutions,  laws, 
or  treaties,  the  heaviest  responsibility  must  weigh,  to 
be  removed  alone  by  the  verdict  of  history  and  the 
conscientious  sanction  of  public  opinion. 

Beneath    the    logic    of   pedants   and    fanatics,    the 


CAVOUR  143 

public  instinct  feels  that  the  law  of  nations  in  no  true 
sense  could  apply  between  the  provincial  States  of 
Italy,  or  govern  relations  which  rest  on  a  condition  of 
virtual  revolution  and  war.  When  the  Sardinian 
armies  invaded  the  Marches  and  Umbria  they  invaded 
the  States  of  a  power  with  whom  they  had  long  been 
waging  a  deadly  but  informal  war.  When  they 
hunted  the  Neapolitan  pretender  to  his  last  retreat, 
they  were  only  crushing  an  outcast  tyrant  and  driving 
forth  an  incendiary  partisan.  Legal  pedantry  and 
hypocritical  formalism  apart,  it  is  true  that  Count 
Cavour  has  the  right  to  say  "We  are  Italy  !  we  act 
in  her  name."  The  judgment  of  free  nations  has 
welcomed  that  which  does  indeed  bear  the  outward 
form  of  the  triumph  of  might  over  right,  and  the 
hopes  of  order  and  national  independence  have  been 
raised  high  by  these  acts  of  violent  invasion.  Yet 
not  the  less  must  we  feel  admiration  for  the  sagacity 
and  courage  of  a  policy  which  so  far  transcends 
the  regions  in  which  ordinary  statesmen  dwell, 
and  belongs  to  the  extraordinary  efforts  of  decisive 
emergencies. 

Count  Cavour  is  a  politician  of  that  high  order 
which  unites  the  most  opposite  qualities,  and  resumes 
in  himself  the  various  forces  of  an  era.  He  embodies 
the  cause  of  monarchy,  order,  and  constitution,  whilst 
working  out  a  revolution  and  founding  a  new  nation. 
At  once  the  sagacious  economist,  the  consummate 
minister,  and  the  dictator  of  a  crisis,  he  is  by 
turns  laborious  and  energetic,  subtle  and  impetuous, 
ingenious  and  audacious,  practical  and  profound. 
Now  it  is  his  task  to  calm  the  agitation  of  a  nation, 
then  to  call  it  to  a  struggle  for  life  ;  now  he  imposes 
on  it  his  own  strong  will,  then  addresses  and  instructs 
its  judgment  ;  sometimes  convincing  in  the  Parlia- 
ment, sometimes  stirring  the  public  heart,  sometimes 


i44   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

guiding  unseen  the  machinery  of  diplomacy  and 
parties. 

He  has  the  true  vein  of  a  great  statesman.  His 
whole  action  is  practical,  relative,  and  instinctive. 
His  policy  rests  upon  principle  ;  yet  he  is  never  the 
slave  of  his  theories.  He  can  rise  to  the  grandeur  of 
ideas,  yet  is  never  carried  away  by  illusions.  An 
inflexible  purpose  may  bow  before  necessity  and 
storms  ;  and  out  of  every  emergency  still  grasp  the 
true  clue  upwards.  No  modern  politician  insists  so 
firmly  upon  theory  ;  none  so  consistently  develops  it 
into  action  ;  and  none  is  so  little  cramped  by  it  in 
practice.  His  love  of  order  never  stiffens  into  oppres- 
sion ;  legality  with  him  stops  short  of  formalism  ;  his 
mastery  of  logic  is  forgotten  when  logic  has  ceased  to 
be  of  use.  With  a  turn  for  diplomacy  worthy  of 
Talleyrand,  his  art  is  restrained  to  its  due  place  and 
function.  A  master  of  party  politics,  he  is  never 
greater  than  when  he  has  ceased  to  be  a  parliament- 
ary leader.  Conservative  by  nature,  he  knows  the 
value  of  institutions  ;  in  the  hour  of  crisis  he  sees 
in  them  nothing  but  forms.  He  has  gauged  popular 
emotion  ;  he  neither  mistakes  its  strength  nor  forgets 
its  fickleness. 

With  an  appetite  for  power  like  Richelieu,  he 
loves  to  rest  upon  public  opinion  ;  and  being  a  real 
dictator,  he  acts  in  the  spirit  of  a  responsible  minister. 
With  a  native  insight  into  character,  there  are  no  men 
and  no  parties  whom  he  hesitates  to  use ;  fanaticism 
or  industry,  authority  or  enthusiasm,  craft  or  heroism, 
are  instruments  which  he  employs  and  controls.  He 
can  lay  deep  plans  without  being  tortuous  ;  be  politic 
without  falsehood  ;  and  strike  an  unexpected  blow 
without  treachery.  In  the  State  he  grasps  a  concentra- 
tion of  power,  which  he  wields  without  selfishness, 
and  which  is  yielded  without  jealousy.  In  Parliament 


CAVOUR  145 

he  can  solicit  the  support  of  a  majority  without 
stooping  to  party  triumphs.  In  the  tribune  he  seeks 
to  convince,  not  to  confute ;  to  win  confidence,  not 
votes.  He  never  perorates,  but  argues  ;  generally 
careless  in  language,  always  keen  in  logic,  sometimes 
rising  into  moving  eloquence,  sometimes  overcoming 
by  inherent  energy. 

In  the  Cabinet  he  is  master  of  diplomatic  fence, 
yet  his  logic  is  ever  drawn  from  public  right  and 
plain  principle.  The  exquisite  skill  with  which  he 
crushes  his  opponent's  case  is  only  equalled  by  the 
substantial  justice  of  his  own  cause.  His  State-papers 
would  be  models  of  art  if  they  were  not  standards  of 
historic  fact.  With  all  his  instinctive  love  of  order 
and  law,  he  sees  that  these  are  not  ends  but  means. 
In  a  crisis  he  can  rise  superior  to  any  notion  but 
that  of  public  safety  and  duty.  To  habitual  industry 
in  preparation  he  unites  an  impetuous  rapidity  of 
execution ;  and  however  careful  in  husbanding  his 
resources,  he  is  prodigal  of  them  in  action.  His  most 
daring  schemes  are  all  within  the  limits  of  reasonable 
safety  ;  if  he  oversteps  legality,  he  remains  true  to 
right.  In  a  word,  he  is  in  our  day  the  single  example 
of  a  ruler  who  governs  by  native  superiority  and  that 
willing  homage  which  ennobles  the  giver  and  the 
receiver.  He  shows  us  how  power  can  be  gathered 
into  one  hand,  yet  be  but  the  expression  of  national 
will.  Nor  less  is  he  an  instance  of  a  politician  who 
conserves  whilst  he  changes ;  who  conciliates  order 
and  movement,  tradition  and  expansion,  the  past  and 
the  present ;  who  innovates  without  convulsion,  and 
modifies  without  destruction.  Thus  he  is  to  us  the 
type  of  the  real  popular  dictator,  and  the  statesman  of 
true  conservative  progress. 


GARIBALDI 

Such  are  the  characteristics  of  Count  Cavour,  and 
they  are  those  essentially  of  the  statesman.  But  they 
represent  but  one  element  of  the  Italian  movement  alone. 
The  sagacity,  self-restraint,  and  perseverance  which 
have  marked  it  are  amply  exhibited  in  him,  but  for  all 
that  has  given  it  life,  poetry,  and  moral  grandeur, 
we  must  find  a  very  different  representative.  The 
virtues,  aspirations,  and  powers  which  we  attribute  to 
Garibaldi  belong  not  either  to  the  minister  himself,  nor 
to  the  classes  of  whom  he  is  the  chief.  There  exists 
beneath  the  surface  an  intensely  popular  element  in 
this  Italian  revolution,  showing  in  reality  nearly  all 
the  features  which  have  distinguished  the  effervescence 
of  new  ideas  in  the  mind  of  the  whole  people,  and 
recalling  in  the  strength  of  its  enthusiasm,  in  the 
electric  contagion  of  its  ideas,  and  in  its  influence  on 
the  moral  sentiments,  the  spirit  which  can  be  seen  to 
move  through  nations  in  great  crises  of  their  history. 

We  can  thus  best  understand  the  heaving  and 
agitation  of  the  mass  of  the  people,  a  new  idea 
sweeping  over  them  like  an  epidemic,  kindling  in  the 
hearts  of  man  and  woman  a  fanatical  enthusiasm, 
moving  man  to  man  and  class  to  class,  elevating 
debased  populations  into  momentary  impulses  of 
dignity  and  virtue,  and  inspiring  the  finer  tempers 
with  unwonted  fires  of  self-sacrifice  and  daring. 
Thus  it  was  that  in  silent  cities  the  people  has  sprung 
forth  as  under  some  sudden  frenzy,  that  armies  have 
laid  down  their  arms  at  the  magical  influence  of  a 
name  or  a  voice,  that  men  of  wealth,  position,  and 
refinement  have  hastened  to  stand  shoulder  to  shoulder 
with  the  peasant  on  bloody  battlefields  or  more 
deadly  camps,  and  have  given  up  every  earthly 


GARIBALDI  147 

interest,  and  even  the  convictions  of  their  whole 
lives,  in  defence  of  a  sacred  cause.  We  are  far  too 
apt  in  presence  of  the  discipline  which  has  been 
submitted  to,  and  of  the  manifest  inferiority  of  the 
Southern  population,  to  underrate  the  extent  as  well 
as  the  intensity  of  the  enthusiasm  of  the  people  of 
the  North.  The  immense  depopulation  of  Venetia, 
the  100,000  men  who  since  the  beginning  of  the 
war  have  volunteered  into  the  different  armies,  the 
sacrifices  borne,  and  the  heroism  shown  by  whole 
classes  of  men,  and  the  resolution  and  patriotism  of 
the  bulk  of  the  people  of  the  North,  cannot  be  effaced 
by  any  tales  of  failure  and  indifference  in  detail,  or  the 
worthlessness  of  the  demoralised  cities  or  barbarous 
peasantry  of  the  South. 

It  is  the  army  of  Garibaldi,  and  their  leader 
himself,  who  most  worthily  represent  all  this  element 
of  the  movement.  With  all  their  dexterity  and 
experience  the  supporters  of  the  statesman  do  not 
adequately  embody  the  vitality  and  elevation  of  the 
popular  instinct.  The  heroic  soldier  and  his  men 
belong  not  to  the  men  who  can  guide  and  administer 
a  State,  but  they  are  of  those  who  fought  with  Manin 
the  desperate  defence  of  Venice,  and  maintained  the 
honour  of  their  capital  against  the  treacherous  insol- 
ence of  France, — of  men  who,  like  the  Bandiera, 
Bassi,  or  Ciceroacchio,  have  been  murdered  in  cold 
blood,  who  have  spent  their  lives  in  prison  and 
exile,  and  lived  a  long  martyrdom  for  their  cause. 
Without  the  spirit  which  sustained  these  men  in  the 
dungeon  or  on  the  scaffold,  it  would  have  been 
impossible  that  the  sacred  tradition  could  have  kept 
its  purity  and  strength.  These  are  the  men,  and 
the  party  to  which  they  belonged,  who  have  taught 
the  youth  of  Italy  to  feel  the  holiness  of  their  cause, 
who  have  clothed  it  with  an  irradiating  splendour,  and 


required  from  its  supporters  a  devotion  and  a  moral 
elevation  unsurpassed.  To  them  it  is  due  that  the 
expulsion  of  the  stranger  means  a  real  national 
regeneration,  and  that  the  future  of  Italy  is  made 
to  rest  upon  the  individual  worth  of  the  citizens. 
They  are  the  men  who  first  saw  and  preached  the 
duty  of  absolute  unity,  of  the  consolidation  of  States, 
and  the  fraternity  of  classes  and  orders,  and  who 
upheld  the  singleness  and  directness  of  purpose  to  the 
one  great  end.  To  them  is  due  chiefly  that  which 
gives  moral  dignity  to  the  Italian  people,  and  but 
for  them  the  sagacity  or  energy  of  the  statesmen 
would  have  dealt  only  with  untutored  masses  and 
a  lifeless,  passionless  multitude. 

It  is  quite  consistent  with  this  view  to  disbelieve 
most  strongly  in  the  capacity  of  such  men  for 
government  or  direction.  With  the  most  emphatic 
conviction  of  the  utter  hopelessness  of  any  revolu- 
tion attempted  under  the  control  of  such  men,  it 
is  impossible  to  refuse  to  the  revolutionary  parties, 
whether  under  the  name  of  Republican  or  National, 
Mazzinist  or  Garibaldian,  the  credit  of  having  set  in 
motion  an  action  of  which  others  were  the  more 
fortunate  directors.  Mazzini,  Garibaldi,  Guerrazzi, 
or  Bertani  have  abundantly  manifested,  on  one 
occasion  after  another,  their  incapacity  for  civil 
organisation  and  rule,  and  the  public  instinct  is 
quite  justified  in  looking  upon  their  ascendency 
with  unconquerable  aversion.  But  as  agitators  their 
influence  has  been  indispensable.  It  is  true  that  in 
1848  they  led  the  national  cause  to  ruin,  but  it  is 
equally  clear  that  their  principles  prepared  it  for 
triumph  in  1860.  More  and  more  we  are  forced  to 
see  how  powerfully  the  abortive  struggle  of  1848 
acted  upon  the  national  mind,  and  led  up  to  the 
success  we  have  lately  witnessed.  The  Lombard 


GARIBALDI  149 

and  Venetian  insurrections,  the  popular  votes  of 
annexation  in  the  Duchies,  the  heroism  of  the  defence 
of  Rome,  had  educated  the  masses  with  a  sense  of 
their  duty  and  an  instinct  towards  union. 

The  effort  of  1848  was  crushed  by  force,  but  not 
the  less  was  it  a  moral  triumph.  It  awakened  the 
national  conscience,  and  penetrated  the  depressed 
multitude.  It  planted  the  standard  of  the  nation,  and 
taught  the  creed  of  unity  and  the  religion  of  patriotism. 
The  task  of  the  statesmen  of  Piedmont  was  but  to 
moderate,  guide,  and  organise  the  irrepressible  spirit 
of  freedom,  which  was  the  outgrowth  of  the  rising  of 
1848.  More  and  more  do  we  see  in  1860,  under 
happier  and  wiser  guidance,  the  noble  enthusiasm  and 
aspirations  of  1848.  But  that  effort  was  made 
notoriously  under  the  auspices  and  direction  of  the 
Republicans.  If  we  measure  out  to  them  our  con- 
demnation of  the  unwisdom  which  brought  them  to 
ruin,  we  should  no  less  give  them  credit  for  the  spirit 
which  at  least  they  succeeded  in  inspiring.  With  no 
stain  upon  its  honour,  with  no  possible  charge  against 
it  but  that  of  misfortune  and  misconception,  the  effort 
of  1848  cannot  be  stigmatised  as  the  work  of  incen- 
diaries or  demagogues.  The  great  agitator  to  whom 
that  movement  owes  at  once  its  energy  and  its  un- 
success  may  indeed  have  been  the  victim  of  desperate 
illusions,  but  wilful  ignorance  only  can  charge  him 
with  baseness,  or  downright  malice  only  represent  him 
as  a  sanguinary  fanatic.  Whatever  faults  may  have 
been  committed  by  the  Republican  Governments  in 
Italy  during  1848,  no  single  charge  of  violence  or 
selfishness  has  ever  been  established  against  them. 
And  those  who  have  really  had  any  knowledge  of 
these  leaders  know  them  to  possess  a  singleness  of 
purpose,  a  strength  of  principle,  and  a  touching  love 
of  their  country  and  their  countrymen,  which  surpasses 


150   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

in  depth  and  purity  anything  that  their  rivals  or  their 
maligners  can  show. 

Whatever  may  be  the  judgment  passed  upon  this 
party  and  the  true  character  of  its  members,  certain  it 
is  that  Garibaldi  himself  is  its  truest  and  fullest  repre- 
sentative. It  is  mere  self-deception  to  deny  that  he 
really  belongs  to  that  body  with  whom  his  whole  life 
has  been  passed,  and  all  his  ideas  derived.  It  is 
much  the  fashion  to  revile  all  the  revolutionary  leaders 
amongst  men,  who  forget  that  they  thereby  are  dis- 
crediting the  whole  previous  history  of  their  favourite 
hero,  and  must  wilfully  distort  the  plainest  evidence  of 
his  acts.  In  spite  of  the  most  convincing  proofs  that 
he  looks  on  Mazzini  still  with  friendship  and  trust, 
that  all  his  friends  belong  to  the  old  Republican  parties, 
and  all  his  acts  are  dictated  by  the  old  doctrines  of 
insurrection,  the  mere  fact  of  his  allegiance  to  the  king 
is  supposed  to  place  him  in  the  constitutional  party. 
The  fact  is,  that  he  belongs  to  the  revolutionary 
classes,  by  his  whole  nature,  habits,  history,  and  situa- 
tion. He  shares  with  them  his  greatness  of  heart,  and 
draws  from  them  the  false  theories  of  his  political 
creed.  He  amplifies  and  exalts  their  virtues,  but  he 
is  not  the  less  involved  in  their  illusions  and  defects. 
The  highest  political  virtues  are  not  incompatible 
with  great  political  incompetence,  and  the  noblest 
elevation  of  character  cannot  exclude  fatal  intellectual 
errors. 

It  is  by  his  character  and  not  by  his  intellect  that 
Garibaldi  holds  his  sway.  It  is  not  by  what  he  directly 
does  that  he  inspires  his  country,  but  by  the  mysterious 
influence  of  his  spirit  and  life.  In  his  story  the 
humblest  and  most  ignorant  can  feel  instinctively  the 
worth  of  a  life  unstained  by  one  selfish  act  or  worldly 
motive  ;  the  simple  majesty  of  a  man  to  whose  eye  his 
fellow-men  are  seen  as  man  to  man,  stripped  of  every 


GARIBALDI  151 

circumstance  of  accident  or  rank,  men  in  whose  soul 
burns  nothing  but  the  fire  which  makes  martyrs  and 
heroes.  It  is  this  power  which  gives  him  a  moral 
influence,  which  neither  king  nor  minister  can  approach. 
Not  merely  through  his  own  country  does  this  in- 
fluence extend.  It  spreads  strangely  through  the 
extent  of  civilised  Europe.  We  have  seen  that  his 
name  inspires  a  something  more  than  passing  sympathy, 
and  is  mixed  with  convictions  of  unusual  tenacity. 
Strange  stories  are  told  of  artisans  in  Berlin,  worship- 
ping in  the  streets  at  a  shrine  of  St.  Garibaldi,  and 
how  his  name  stirred  the  blood  of  the  Faubourg  St. 
Antoine  in  Paris.  To  the  workmen  of  Glasgow  or 
Lyons,  as  much  as  of  Naples  or  Milan,  he  represents 
the  claims  of  their  own  order,  and  from  Poland  to 
Spain,  and  from  Scotland  to  Sicily,  his  course  has 
kindled  the  interest  of  the  democracy  of  Europe. 

He  has,  in  every  fibre,  the  nature  of  the  people,  and 
embodies  their  craving  for  a  nobler  future  to  be  won 
by  their  innate  energy.  He  has  their  strength  and 
their  weakness ;  their  generous  instincts  and  their 
incoherent  doctrines  ;  and  his  career,  in  which  both 
have  been  signally  exhibited,  has  awakened  a  motion 
of  that  spirit  which  runs  through  each  State  in  Europe 
when  revolution  begins  in  one.  He  feels  himself  to 
belong  not  only  to  Italy,  but  to  the  cause  of  liberty 
through  Europe.  When  he  fought  in  the  Republics 
of  America,  when  he  promises  his  sword  to  Hungary, 
or  expresses  his  sympathy  with  the  people  in  England 
or  France,  it  is  because  he  feels  instinctively  the 
brotherhood  of  people  with  people,  and  the  bonds 
which  unite  their  future  destinies  in  one.  Nor  does 
he  ever  fail  to  show  that  he  belongs  little  to  the  actual 
political  systems,  but  to  a  new  and  possible  order  of 
things.  To  him  the  forms,  constitutions,  and  cere- 
monials of  the  day  are  vanity  and  expedients.  He 


152    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

feels  intensely  with  the  heart  of  the  nation,  and 
believes  it  will  rise  into  a  higher  life.  His  perfect 
simplicity  of  existence,  his  contempt  for  dignities, 
wealth,  or  power,  his  gentleness  and  guilelessness  of 
heart  belong  indeed  to  a  period  when  public  life  shall 
have  risen  to  a  purer  atmosphere.  That  he  does  not 
understand  it  as  it  is,  that  he  is  ignorant  of  its  tortuous 
mechanism,  is  more  to  his  honour  than  to  his  discredit. 
He  has  left  the  task  for  which  he  has  neither  ability 
nor  heart  to  others.  He  has  gone  back  to  his  own 
simple  world.  He  has  left  behind  him  the  memory 
of  an  unsullied  character,  a  sense  of  duty,  and  a  love  of 
truth,  of  which  his  age  can  see  but  half  the  worth  and 
beauty. 

But  whilst  Garibaldi  retains  the  idea  and  habits  of 
those  with  whom  he  has  acted  through  life,  his  fine 
character  enables  him  to  see  and  avoid  the  errors 
which  are  peculiar  to  them.  It  is  this  instinct  which 
has  gathered  up  all  his  faculties  with  native  sincerity 
round  the  standard  of  Savoy,  and  has  made  as  the 
centre  of  his  creed  loyalty  to  King  Victor  Emmanuel. 
But  this  adherence  to  the  king  is  very  far  from  being 
with  him  a  political  dogma.  It  is  nothing  but  an 
instinctive  conception  of  the  necessity  of  the  case  and 
the  practical  sense  of  a  man  of  action.  His  whole 
mind,  however,  is  essentially  republican,  and  there  is 
something  preposterous  in  supposing  that  such  a  man 
can  have  any  leaning  towards  monarchy  as  a  system. 
But  he  loves  and  honours  the  soldier  king  in  his  heart, 
and  he  has  idealised  in  him  the  national  life.  To  this 
beautiful  fiction  in  the  mind  of  Garibaldi  is  perhaps 
due  more  than  to  any  other  single  cause  the  welcome 
which  the  staunchest  republicans  have  given  to  the 
once  hated  House  of  Savoy. 

He,  the  man  to  whom  peasant  and  prince  appear 
each  in  their  native  worth  as  men,  to  whom  all  the 


GARIBALDI  153 

trappings  of  social  life  are  contemptible,  and  the  whole 
political  system  of  which  the  monarchy  is  but  the  head 
is  alien,  to  whom  laws,  tradition,  or  custom  weigh 
nothing  in  the  balance  against  the  safety  of  the  people 
and  the  honour  of  the  nation,  gives  hearty  allegiance 
to  the  king,  in  whom  he  sees  personified  the  destinies 
of  his  country,  and  who  is  pointed  out  by  fate  as  its 
natural  dictator  and  chief.  Under  such  an  influence 
only  could  a  nation  in  whom  the  bare  notion  of 
monarchy  has  never  been  fairly  implanted,  and  in 
whom  in  this  age  no  dogmas  of  a  constitutional  aristo- 
cracy are  ever  likely  to  implant  it,  receive  with  enthu- 
siastic submission  the  monarch  who  was  indispensable 
as  a  centre  of  union  and  of  action.  It  was  through 
this  personal  trust  of  Garibaldi  that,  in  moments  of 
great  danger,  fatal  mistakes  were  avoided,  when  after 
the  armistice  of  Villafranca,  on  the  several  proposed 
invasions  of  the  Papal  territories  or  the  liberation  of 
Sicily  and  Naples,  it  required  the  whole  force  of  an 
influence  like  his  to  restrain  the  fiercest  tempers  and 
most  earnest  republicans  collected  round  his  standard 
from  raising  a  separate  standard,  and  at  once  com- 
mencing a  career  of  insurrection. 

It  is  this  idea  which  forms  the  principal  link  between 
two  very  opposite  parties — in  a  word,  between  the  two 
distinct  schools  of  policy  of  Italy — the  constitutional 
and  revolutionary.  Nothing  but  a  practical  compro- 
mise in  the  person  of  a  beloved  leader  could  reconcile 
two  parties  who  so  thoroughly  misunderstand  and  dis- 
like each  other.  More  than  anything  else,  the  example 
of  Garibaldi  has  contributed  to  this  end.  At  his  word 
the  most  inveterate  Republicans  have  consented  to 
forego  their  principles,  and  the  high  sense  of  Cavour 
has  not  feared  to  use  their  indispensable  services.  It 
was  the  name  of  Garibaldi  which  finally  decided  the 
adhesion  of  the  old  party  throughout  Italy  in  1859, 


154   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

and  has  retained  them  true  to  their  allegiance  under 
the  most  trying  circumstances.  But  it  is  no  less  clear 
that  he  is  heart  and  soul  with  them.  The  revolu- 
tionary engine — the  levee  en  masse — war  carried  on  by 
insurrection  —  trust  alone  in  native  valour  without 
discipline,  organisation,  or  ceremony,  is  the  only 
weapon  which  he  knows.  Diplomatic  measures, 
foreign  assistance,  unless  simply  of  volunteers,  material 
equipment,  and  even  military  science  are  to  him  as 
irksome  and  worthless  as  golden  trappings  or  braided 
uniforms.  He  appeals  to  the  heart  of  the  people 
alone,  and  trusts  in  their  innate  honour,  energy,  and 
heroism. 

It  is  this  which  makes  at  once  his  strength  and  his 
weakness.  He  typifies  and  he  evokes  the  life  which 
alone  can  make  a  nation  free  or  strong,  but  he  discards 
at  once  all  the  institutions  by  which  its  strength  is 
disciplined  and  directed.  Himself  and  his  followers 
feel  in  them  no  small  measure  of  that  unquenchable 
fire  which  in  1793  preserved  and  created  France ; 
they  will  not  see  how  far  the  condition  of  their 
country  and  their  countrymen  is  removed  from  that 
era  of  convulsive  excitement.  Yet  no  little  of  the 
religious  zeal  of  those  French  Republicans  may  be 
seen  in  his  army  and  in  him.  To  him  the  cause  and 
its  defenders  are  alike  sacred  and  dear.  He  can  hardly 
understand  that  one  who  has  laboured  and  suffered  for 
Italy  is  unworthy  of  responsibility  and  confidence. 
In  his  eyes,  one  who  has  bled  on  the  field  or  pined  in 
a  dungeon  is  a  martyr  to  whom  honour,  influence,  and 
trust  are  due  without  stint  or  hesitation.  He  who  has 
endured  the  longest  exile  or  the  heaviest  irons,  or  he 
who  is  most  hateful  to  the  common  enemy,  must  of 
all  men  be  most  capable  and  worthy  to  serve  the 
common  country.  He  who  has  shown  jnost  his  love 
for  her  must  be  best  fitted  to  protect  her.  He  who  in 


GARIBALDI  155 

the  darkest  hour  uttered  the  most  inspiring  protest  is 
the  truest  guide  in  the  hour  of  relief.  Devotion  must 
imply  capacity,  and  unbounded  faith  is  the  best  proof 
of  a  patriotic  heart. 

Such  is  the  spirit  in  which  the  simple  -  hearted 
soldier  clings  to  his  old  friends  and  their  views,  upholds 
Mazzini,  Crispi,  Mordini,  Mario,  and  Cattaneo,  and 
thrusts,  as  rulers,  upon  the  bewildered  Neapolitans  and 
Sicilians  men  who  have  learnt  their  creed  of  politics 
and  system  of  action  in  conspiracies,  in  exile,  and  in 
dungeons.  With  him  they  hold  such  a  place  as  the 
"  people  of  God "  held  in  the  heart  of  Cromwell. 
Those  who  have  given  all  for  the  cause  are  sanctified 
in  his  eyes.  He  feels  for  them  as  members  of  a  sort  of 
religious  brotherhood,  of  whose  rectitude  and  zeal  no 
doubt  can  be  permitted.  These  are  the  spirits,  as  he 
believes,  the  country  needs.  It  wants  nothing  but 
sincerity  and  vigour.  They  who  love  it  most  serve 
it  best.  The  intrigues  and  artifices  of  professional 
politicians  discredit  and  pervert  the  national  honour. 
Compromises,  arrangements,  and  prevarications  belong 
to  their  trade.  The  moral  sense  is  lowered  by  their 
specious  precautions,  and  the  keenness  of  self-reliance 
is  blunted  by  their  diplomacy.  Innate  energy  and 
daring  are  nobler  and  surer  weapons  ;  the  generous 
hearts  of  the  people  will  do  the  rest.  Brotherly 
affection  and  frank  forbearance  must  soothe  the  anti- 
pathies of  party.  Unity  of  purpose  and  genuine  zeal 
will  preserve  the  public  security  and  order.  Generosity 
will  supply  the  necessaries  of  life.  Mutual  trust  must 
stand  for  discipline ;  the  service  of  the  country  is 
above  any  earthly  reward  ;  its  true  leaders  need  no 
formal  commissions  or  solemn  election.  Heroic 
valour  supplies  the  place  of  armies,  and  simple  man- 
hood and  its  own  great  heart  will  create  a  nation 
worthy  of  freedom. 


156   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

But  whilst  believing  this  in  all  sincerity  and  fervour, 
he  is  a  slave  to  no  system,  and  is  not  deluded  by  any 
narrow  dogma.  The  same  love  for  his  country  which 
he  perceives  in  Mazzini,  he  recognises  in  Victor 
Emmanuel.  He,  too,  and  his  soldiers  and  generals, 
have  fought  and  laboured  for  the  cause ;  and  the  very 
ministers  and  politicians  and  official  servants  of  the 
State  have,  as  he  sees,  after  their  fashion,  a  genuine 
sense  of  the  common  duty.  Hence,  throwing  aside 
all  logic,  his  fine  instinct  unites  both  parties  in  one. 
Full  of  loyalty  to  the  king,  he  yet  holds  by  all  the 
friends  of  his  old  days  ;  devoted  to  the  principles  of 
Mazzini,  he  submits  to  the  will  of  the  king  and  his 
ministers.  Thus  are  two  rival  and  hostile  parties 
reunited  and  reconciled.  The  Garibaldians  dare  not 
repudiate  a  king  whom  their  beloved  chief  delights  to 
honour  and  obey.  The  monarchists  are  forced  to  be 
forbearing  with  a  party  to  whose  head  they  owe  an 
incomparable  service.  The  one  have  come  to  feel 
that  from  the  ranks  of  the  revolution  has  come  forth 
the  noblest  son  of  Italy  ;  the  others,  with  their  leader, 
can  say,  "  We  are  Republicans  still,  but  our  republic 
is  Victor  Emmanuel." 

This  sense  of  duty  to  the  king,  in  whom  he  sees 
personified  the  union  and  the  honour  of  the  country, 
at  last,  after  many  struggles,  induced  him  to  surrender 
the  dictatorship  of  the  South,  in  spite  of  his  deepest 
convictions  and  an  intense  repugnance  to  the  ministry 
of  Cavour.  Full  of  the  purest  ideas  of  the  insurrec- 
tionary party,  still  smarting  under  the  shameful  sacri- 
fice of  Nice,  and  cherishing  an  inextinguishable  hatred 
of  Napoleon,  Garibaldi  was  bent  on  retaining  the 
power  in  South  Italy,  and  rushing  with  blind  heroism 
to  the  rescue  of  Venice  and  Rome.  It  needed  the 
whole  strength  of  his  unalloyed  trust  in  the  king  to 
restrain  him  from  this  fatal  delirium.  With  many 


GARIBALDI  157 

struggles  he  recovered  his  reason  ;  his  instinctive  good 
sense  returned.  Almost  heart-broken  by  the  sacrifice, 
he  gave  up,  in  the  presence  of  an  overpowering  sense 
of  duty,  all  that  he  holds  most  dear  and  most  true. 
He  consented  to  look  on  upon  the  prolonged  slavery 
of  his  brethren  ;  to  yield  to  the  will  of  a  degrading 
oppressor ;  to  sacrifice  his  oldest  friends  and  most 
trusted  followers.  And  last  trial  of  all,  he  consented 
to  place  the  work  of  his  own  hands  and  the  people  he 
had  fought  for  into  the  keeping  of  men  to  whom  he 
bears  the  keenest  antipathy,  to  whose  policy  his  whole 
life  is  a  protest,  and  who  have  but  recently  degraded 
the  nation  and  bartered  its  very  principle  of  life. 
Such  was  the  temper  in  which  the  Dictator,  much 
loth,  accepted  the  annexation  and  its  consequences. 

It  needed  some  overpowering  sense  of  duty  to 
counterbalance  his  ingrained  convictions.  Had  he 
not  acted  so,  it  is  plain  that  he  was  going  on  the  road 
to  ruin.  Not  only  must  his  attack  have  been  infallibly 
crushed  in  the  field  (even  it  would  seem  by  the  arms 
of  Sardinia  herself),  but  the  internal  state  of  the 
country  would  have  shortly  resulted  in  irredeemable 
chaos.  It  may  indeed  now  be  assumed  that  the 
Garibaldian  regime  would  have  ended  in  Naples  in 
the  most  complete  dissolution  and  anarchy,  and  almost 
the  rupture  of  society  itself.  It  needs  little  argument 
in  the  face  of  incontestable  facts.  Not  indeed  that 
the  rulers  appointed  were  in  themselves  incompetent 
or  untrustworthy,  but  because  they  were  wholly 
incompatible  with  the  people  whom  they  had  to 
govern.  Full  of  the  notions  of  insurrection  and 
revolution,  they  were  applying  their  own  extreme 
and  incoherent  system  in  a  society  quite  unprepared 
for  it,  and  to  circumstances  in  which  it  was  an 
anachronism.  In  a  half-barbarous  and  debased  popu- 
lation it  was  necessary  not  to  inflame,  but  to  calm  ; 


158   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

not  to  impel,  but  to  restrain.  They  needed  the 
strong  hand  of  a  regular  and  orderly  Government,  not 
the  exciting  stimulus  of  insurrectionary  committees, 
and  the  whole  apparatus  of  revolutionary  action. 
Such  a  population  could  be  controlled  only  by  the 
accustomed  weight  of  recognised  Government.  The 
Dictator  was  full  of  trust  that  they  could  be  aroused 
to  the  due  point  of  insurgent  energy.  But  a  blunder 
so  fatal  as  this  does  not  conclusively  prove  his  in- 
capacity for  civil  government  under  more  favourable 
circumstances.  It  only  shows  that  he  had  thoroughly 
mistaken  the  situation  and  the  real  necessities  of  the 
case,  and  was  only  able  to  shake  himself  free  from  the 
notions  and  habits  of  his  whole  previous  life  by  an 
effort  of  the  most  splendid  abnegation,  and  by  with- 
drawing altogether  and  abruptly  from  a  post  the  duties 
of  which  he  profoundly  misconceived. 

The  sacrifice  of  principle  once  made,  the  retire- 
ment to  Caprera  was  a  necessary  and  subordinate 
incident.  Much  has  been  said  of  this  act  by  men 
who  little  understand  his  character.  It  was  neither 
the  result  of  mortification,  or  impulse,  or  vanity,  much 
less  of  a  morose  or  factious  temper.  With  him  to 
retire  to  his  position  as  a  simple  yeoman  was  a  natural 
consequence  of  no  public  task  needing  him.  The 
self-sacrifice  is  seen  in  the  surrender  of  his  principles 
and  friends,  not  in  his  love  of  the  happiness  of  private 
life.  Garibaldi,  if  not  the  leader  of  a  revolution,  is 
nothing.  To  head  an  army  of  heroes,  to  awaken  the 
enthusiasm  of  a  population,  to  initiate  a  new  order  of 
ideas  and  acts,  is  his  only  duty.  To  organise,  to 
govern,  and  to  compromise,  to  prepare  by  patient  fore- 
thought, or  devise  by  dexterous  management,  is  above 
or  below  his  power.  He  cannot  make  the  laborious 
official,  or  the  sagacious  minister,  or  the  rigid  dis- 
ciplinarian. His  character  is  too  lofty  for  the  petty 


GARIBALDI  159 

necessities  of  these  duties.  He  belongs  wholly  to  a 
purer  atmosphere.  When  no  unusual  effort  is  re- 
quired, there  is  little  in  which  he  can  serve  his 
country.  He  retires  in  the  calmer  moments  of 
ordinary  life  to  the  simplicity  of  the  life  of  the 
humblest  citizen.  Yet  natural  and  voluntary  as  his 
retirement  has  been,  it  is  not  the  less  melancholy. 
For  a  character  of  such  strength  the  surrender  of  such 
hopes  and  purposes  gives  a  profound  shock.  Though 
feeling  the  necessity  of  the  case,  he  could  scarcely 
comprehend  all  the  reasons  which  made  his  mere 
presence  a  danger.  Yet  his  retirement  to  his  island 
is,  perhaps,  the  most  instructive,  as  it  is  certainly  the 
most  honourable  act  of  his  life.  By  it  his  party  have 
learnt  to  yield,  however  reluctantly,  to  the  true  interests 
of  their  country  ;  and  the  name  of  an  Italian  has  been 
placed  before  the  eyes  of  Europe  as  the  symbol  of  the 
purest  self-devotion,  and  a  religious  sense  of  public 
duty. 

Garibaldi  thus  gives  to  the  national  movement  a 
character  which  was  essential,  and  could  come  from 
no  other.  The  creation  of  a  nation  needs  more  than 
victories,  treaties,  institutions,  or  administration. 
Success  in  the  field  or  the  council  may  furnish  it 
with  opportunities.  True  national  life  needs  real 
public  regeneration.  It  is  right,  then,  that  Garibaldi 
should  be  felt  to  be  the  popular  hero.  In  a  prolonged 
struggle,  requiring  so  much  from  skill,  circumstances, 
and  foreign  aid,  it  needed  the  contact  of  one  great 
heart  to  keep  alive  the  sense  of  dignity  and  honour. 
Whilst  ministers  were  engaged  in  diplomacy,  intrigue, 
or  compromise  (essential  as  they  too  were),  it  was 
well  that  a  hero  should  be  found  to  speak  of  nothing 
but  truth  and  duty.  Italian  nationality  means  more 
than  independence  and  freedom,  or  it  means  little. 
To  show  its  true  destiny,  it  needed  one  splendid 


160   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

example  of  public  duty  without  blemish  or  alloy. 
Henceforth  for  all  Italians  the  memory  of  freedom  is 
for  ever  bound  up  with  the  ideal  of  perfect  social 
virtue.  In  years  to  come,  in  the  strife  of  public  life 
they  may  learn  from  him  higher  aims  and>  nobler  acts. 
Nor  was  it  less  essential  that  in  a  deadly  struggle  with 
a  foreigner  they  should  be  headed  by  one  who  knows 
the  true  brotherhood  of  nations :  and  that  a  war  of 
hatred  should  be  tempered  by  one  who  has  a  woman's 
gentleness  and  mercy.  Thus  the  Italian  has  fought 
without  the  brutalising  hate  of  race  ;  and  no  single 
instance  of  ferocity  has  stained  his  chivalry  :  for  their 
chief  loves  all  brave  men,  and  can  pity  even  the 
oppressor.  Nor  has  this  re -consecration  of  war 
brought  back  its  barbarous  traditions,  or  its  retro- 
grade instincts.  He,  who  for  the  last  time  has  made 
war  noble  in  Europe,  has  cried  aloud  to  it  with  almost 
fanatic  aspiration  for  universal  peace.  The  noblest 
soldier  of  our  day  tramples  on  the  pomp  and  pride  of 
war  with  native  loathing  and  contempt.  So,  too,  it 
was  right  that  the  popular  heroism  which  lay  burning 
beneath  the  action  of  state  policy  should  have  its  due 
place  and  task.  If  all  the  power  in  this  national 
struggle  has  gone  to  the  great  and  noble,  it  was  well 
that  the  true  halo  should  rest  round  one  who  is  of  and 
with  the  people.  In  the  midst  of  convulsion  and 
strife,  there  rises  up  an  image  of  mildness,  simplicity, 
and  tenderness,  a  gentle  spirit  calming  passions, 
jealousies,  and  hatreds,  disarming  treachery,  and 
putting  selfishness  to  shame.  Men  have  seen  in  his 
look  the  traditional  image  of  goodness,  and  have  not 
scrupled  to  call  him  the  Apostle  and  Messiah  of  their 
race,  as  at  once  the  deliverer  from  oppression  and  the 
teacher  of  a  moral  regeneration. 

Of  all  the  comparisons  which  have  been  made  for 
him  there  are  none  which  are  not  very  wide  of  the 


GARIBALDI  161 

reality.  He  has,  indeed,  none  of  the  qualities  of 
statesman,  dictator,  or  commander.  That  which 
belongs  to  him  exclusively  is  a  species  of  popular 
inspiration  and  influence  as  by  electric  contagion  of 
emotions.  More  than  to  warriors  or  politicians  he 
belongs  to  the  order  of  religious  enthusiasts.  It  is  a 
character  infusing  itself  through  a  nation.  One  story 
there  is  in  history  which  in  some  moments  recalls  the 
features  of  his.  One  character  there  has  been  with 
whom  his  has  some  traits  of  likeness.  Utterly  unlike, 
as  in  many  respects  it  is  (and  without  instituting  a 
purely  fanciful  comparison),  there  is  something  in  the 
great  Liberator  of  the  spirit  of  the  Maid  of  Orleans. 
Sprung  like  her  from  the  depths  of  the  people  with 
whom  he  is  identified  in  every  fibre  of  his  heart,  he, 
too,  in  the  extreme  need  of  his  country,  has  upraised 
it  by  an  almost  miraculous  career.  As  in  hers,  the 
destinies  of  his  country  are  bound  up  in  his  mind  with 
the  will  of  Providence,  from  whom  deliverance  is 
looked  for  by  a  faith  truly  religious.  She,  the  simplest 
and  purest  of  spirits,  went  forth  from  her  peasant  home 
rapt  almost  in  a  trance  through  her  deep  "  pity  for  the 
realm  of  France,"  and  intense  belief  in  the  greatness 
of  her  people,  and  carrying  daring  and  devotion  to  the 
verge  of  fanaticism,  awoke  in  the  very  depths  of  society 
the  heart  of  the  nation  out  of  the  midst  of  despair, 
until  by  the  sheer  strength  of  native  worth,  the  over- 
wrought people  had  vindicated  for  themselves  their 
honour  and  salvation,  in  spite  of  every  human  obstacle, 
and  in  defiance  of  every  recognised  means  or  aid.  A 
spirit  not  absolutely  of  another  kind  burns  also  in  him. 
He,  goaded  almost  to  madness  at  the  sight  of  his 
country's  degradation,  and  called  forth  by  the  con- 
sciousness of  a  nobler  destiny,  has  given  up  his  every 
thought,  act,  and  wish  as  to  a  sacred  cause  ;  and 
touching  the  inmost  heart  of  his  brothers,  and  calling 

M 


1 62   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

them  round  a  king  in  whom  the  nation  itself  is  idealised 
before  his  eyes,  has  led  them  on  to  incredible  success, 
and  inspired  them  with  unconquerable  faith.  She  who 
breathed  life  into  France,  her  work  once  done,  was  a 
peasant  girl  again.  So,  too,  the  rock  of  Caprera  lives 
in  the  hearts  of  millions  of  Italians  as  the  emblem 
of  perfect  worth,  of  moral  dignity,  and  of  faith 
unwavering. 


VI 

AFGHANISTAN 

(1879) 

At  the  close  of  the  second  administration  of  Lord  Beaconsfield, 
in  December  1879,  public  opinion  was  deeply  excited  over 
the  wanton  invasion  of  Afghanistan  and  the  continued 
Indian  warfare  instigated  by  the  Viceroy  as  part  of  his 
policy  of  Imperial  expansion.  Mr.  Gladstone  and  the 
leaders  of  the  Liberal  party  were  incessantly  denouncing 
these  adventures  in  speeches  which  led  to  the  fall  of  the 
Government  early  in  1880. 

I  was  at  the  time  in  close  touch  with  them  and  in  con- 
stant relations  with  Mr.  John  Morley,  then  editor  of  the 
Fortnightly  Review.  /  carefully  studied  the  news  of 
the  Afghan  war  and  the  military  occupation  of  Kabul, 
seeing  all  telegrams  published  in  India  or  at  home.  The 
system  of  secrecy  by  means  of  the  '•'•military  censorship  " 
was  not  then  organised  so  strictly  as  it  has  been  in  our 
later  wars. 

Besides  this,  I  was  in  daily  communication  with  the  late 
Lord  Hobhouse  and  the  late  Sir  Henry  Norman,  and  other 
old  soldiers  and  officials,  who  voluntarily  supplied  me  with 
information  not  known  outside  the  India  Office,  and  with 
private  letters  written  home  by  officers  in  active  service. 
I  received  a  long  correspondence  from  Lord  Lytton 
himself,  and  I  saw  letters  from  a  former  Viceroy,  besides 
others  from  officers  in  the  front  who  were  unknown  to  me 
and  to  whom  I  was  unknown. 

163 


1 64   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

By  these  means  I  was  in  possession  of  a  body  of  exact 
and  authoritative  details  as  to  all  that  took  place.  The 
attempts  made  by  officials  in  India  to  trace  my  means  of 
information  signally  failed,  because  the  writers  af  the  con- 
fidential letters  shown  me  did  not  even  know  my  name. 
With  the  support  of  the  editor  and  of  his  political  friends,  I 
wrote  two  articles  in  the  Fortnightly  Review,  December 
1879  and  March  1880  (Nos.  156,  159],  using  the  mass 
of  special  knowledge  I  possessed.  The  first  of  these  was 
reprinted  as  a  pamphlet,  and  was  circulated  widely  by  one 
of  the  Liberal  Associations  at  their  cost.  Attempts  were 
made  to  dispute  some  of  my  statements  of  fact ;  but  I 
never  saw  any  replies  which  were  not  either  irrelevant  or 
false — "  as  false  as  a  bulletin" 

I  now  re-issue  the  more  general  and  permanent  parts 
of  the  first  of  these  articles.  I  reserve  for  the  future  the 
special  details  of  the  incidents  of  the  war ;  but,  as  I  still 
hold  my  papers  and  many  letters  from  eminent  persons,  I  can 
substantiate  all  that  I  state  when  the  time  comes.  It  is 
fortunate  that  our  relations  with  Afghanistan  are  now 
friendly  and  permanent,  so  that  no  indiscretions  can  be 
charged  in  returning  to  a  history  nearly  thirty  years 
old. 

The  general  principles  of  international  morality  and  of 
justice  herein  maintained  are  just  as  important  as  ever, 
and  are  quite  as  much  in  danger  of  being  violated. 
Indeed,  the  same  crimes  and  follies  have  been  continually 
committed,  and  by  both  political  parties  alternately,  in  the 
long  series  of  Asian  and  African  wars  of  the  last  thirty 
years — down  to  the  most  recent  of  all — the  idiotic  campaign 
in  Tibet  (1908). 


"  A  superior  race  is  bound  to  observe  the  highest  current 
morality  of  the  time  in  all  its  dealings  with  the  subject 
race" — JOHN  MORLEY. 

BY  what  title  are  we  treating  the  Afghan  people  as 
rebels  ?      By  what  law  are  our  generals  hanging  men 


AFGHANISTAN  165 

on  charges  of  leading  the  enemy's  forces  to  battle  ? 
Whence  comes  our  right  to  kill  priests  who  incite 
their  people  to  resist  us  ?  That  our  armies  have 
invaded  Afghanistan,  and  in  two  expeditions  have 
crushed  the  soldiers  from  Kabul,  we  all  know.  That 
we  have  broken  up  what  shadow  of  state  existed  ;  that 
we  have  its  titular  ruler  a  prisoner  ;  that  we  have 
seized  his  treasures,  and  destroyed  the  centre  of  his 
capital — all  this  is  very  true.  It  is  what  invaders  and 
conquerors  usually  do,  or  at  least  have  done  in  former 
ages.  But  having  done  all  this,  by  what  right,  in 
public  law  or  in  moral  justice,  do  we  now  affect  to 
treat  the  conquered  people  as  rebels,  and  hang  the 
generals  and  the  priests  who  led  them  to  defend  their 
country  ? 

We  well  know  what  is  the  official  plea  for  these 
acts.  It  was  not  unskilfully  concocted.  It  is  this. 
Down  to  last  August  we  had  on  our  North-Western 
frontier  in  India,  it  was  said,  a  strong,  friendly,  and 
independent  kingdom.  We  had  lately  entered  on 
closer  terms  of  amity  with  this  friendly  nation,  and 
had  covered  its  sovereign  with  personal  favours.  We 
had  an  envoy  and  a  brilliant  suite  in  his  capital. 
Suddenly  a  faction  in  his  army  mutiny  ;  they  over- 
power our  friendly  prince  j  they  attack  our  embassy, 
and  kill  our  envoy  and  his  escort.  The  prince  for  the 
moment  is  unable  to  restore  order ;  we  go  to  assist 
him  ;  he  even  invites  us.  We  enter  his  kingdom  to 
assist  in  maintaining  the  police.  A  few  murderers 
and  robbers  still  trouble  the  security  of  his  capital. 
We  must  assist  our  friend  to  overcome  his  rebels  and 
mutineers  at  home. 

So  far  the  official  plea  runs  smoothly  enough.  But 
in  the  face  of  the  facts  we  know,  it  has  grown  too 
unreal  to  be  stated  with  gravity.  Our  expedition  to 
restore  order  in  the  midst  of  a  mutiny  becomes  an 


1 66    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

army  of  invasion  and  conquest.  India  heaves  with  the 
effort.  The  North- West  is  denuded  of  its  troops  ; 
swept  of  its  baggage  animals,  its  supplies,  and  its 
material.  Millions  and  millions  are  poured  out  with 
an  almost  desperate  eagerness  to  win.  As  the  invading 
army  advances,  it  finds  that  a  war  is  before  it  at  least 
as  formidable  as  the  former  war  of  conquest.  The 
mutineers  prove  to  be  the  regular  troops  of  Kabul  j 
they  fight  battles  with  obstinacy  ;  they  do  all  that  a 
half-armed  and  semi-civilised  race  of  mountaineers  can 
do  to  defend  their  homes  and  their  freedom.  Our 
armies  advance  with  skill  and  rapidity  j  the  resistance 
is  crushed  out  in  a  series  of  battles,  bloody  enough  to 
the  defeated,  and  certainly  spoken  of  as  victories  at 
home.  The  capital  is  occupied  with  all  the  formalities 
of  a  conquered  city  ;  and  the  people  are  dealt  with  as 
national  enemies.  It  turns  out  that  in  all  probability 
the  friendly  prince  was  himself  the  author  of  the 
attack  ;  that  he  must  be  kept  a  prisoner,  and  no  doubt 
will  be  tried  for  his  life  ;  his  property  is  seized,  his 
palace  destroyed,  and  his  titular  kingdom  is  treated  as 
a  thing  of  the  past.  The  occupied  country  is  dealt 
with  as  a  conquered  province  ;  and  an  outcry  is  raised 
from  our  soldiers  to  annex  it  without  more  ado. 

It  seemed  good  last  year  to  the  British  Government 
to  invade  a  neighbouring  independent  people.  That 
people  was  a  group  of  rude  tribes  hardly  formed  into  a 
state,  fiercely  fanatical  in  religion,  and  proud  of  their 
freedom  and  independence.  After  laying  heavy 
burdens  on  suffering  India,  our  armies  succeeded  in 
crushing  the  national  defence,  in  driving  the  sovereign 
into  exile  and  death,  in  destroying  what  cohesion  had 
previously  existed  in  his  name.  A  period  of  confusion 
followed,  the  kingdom  dissolved  into  separate  and 
unsettled  groups,  and  the  tribes  and  chiefs  made  the 
most  of  their  new  independence.  Some  partial  attempt 


AFGHANISTAN  167 

at  resettlement  followed.  A  son  of  the  dead  sovereign, 
just  released  from  a  long  imprisonment,  succeeded  in 
securing  some  show  of  authority  in  the  capital,  and  in 
some  other  parts  of  the  country.  It  was  convenient  to 
treat  him  as  the  ruler,  and  we  partly  enabled  him  to 
become  so  in  fact.  The  late  envoy  forced  on  the 
bewildered  prince  such  terms  as  it  suited  us  to  dictate, 
and  with  fair  words  a  nominal  peace  was  effected. 

But  all  who  knew  Afghanistan  warned  us  that  the 
treaty  was  a  piece  of  paper,  that  the  prince  had  no  real 
power  to  execute  the  treaty,  even  if  he  had  the  will, 
that  a  large  portion  of  the  country  repudiated  him,  that 
the  leading  spirits  of  the  people  regarded  him  as  a 
traitor,  a  puppet,  and  a  coward.  If  ever  warning  was 
justified  by  events  it  was  that  which  all  the  cooler 
heads  foretold  when  they  said  that  to  make  your 
puppet  sign  an  ignominious  treaty  was  not  to  conquer 
a  country,  and  to  send  a  small  force  to  hector  over  the 
puppet  in  his  mountain  capital  was  a  wild  and  fool- 
hardy scheme.  However,  it  was  done.  Into  the 
midst  of  a  turmoil  of  fierce  tribes,  smarting  under 
defeat,  furious  with  religious  hatred,  and  torn  by 
intrigues  and  dissensions,  the  so-called  envoy  was  sent 
to  enforce  the  terms  of  a  so-called  treaty  which  the 
tribes  had  in  no  way  accepted,  to  dictate  to  a  sovereign 
who  was  hardly  obeyed  by  his  own  bodyguard,  and 
scarcely  secure  in  his  own  capital.  Almost  the  one 
thing  that  Afghans  and  their  chiefs  for  generations  had 
agreed  in  was  to  resist  the  presence  of  British  soldiers 
and  officials.  And  here,  by  virtue  of  a  treaty  which 
these  chiefs  repudiated,  signed  by  a  prince  whom  many 
of  them  did  not  acknowledge,  a  small  British  force 
entered  the  capital,  headed  by  the  soldier  who  last  year 
sought  almost  to  force  the  Khyber  Pass,  and  who  this 
year  had  personally  dictated  the  treaty.  It  was  almost 
to  invite  an  outrage,  to  make  a  collision  inevitable. 


1 68   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

What  else  could  we  have  done  if  we  wished  an  excuse 
for  a  new  war  ? 

But  this  peaceful  ambassador  was  only  an  ambassador 
in  name.  He  came  at  the  head  of  a  squadron.  The 
so-called  suite  of  this  so-called  envoy  consisted  of  a 
small  military  force  of  about  sixty  or  seventy  picked 
soldiers.  It  is  true  they  were  not  strong  enough  for 
an  army  ;  but  they  were  much  too  strong  for  an 
embassy.  It  was  not  quite  a  corps  of  occupation,  nor 
quite  a  corps  of  observation,  and  they  came  in  what 
was  at  least  a  military  truce.  But  they  practically 
served  the  purpose  of  an  army  of  occupation  and  of  a 
corps  of  observation  ;  and  they  visibly  represented  an 
ample  army  in  reserve.  When  we  know  what  feats 
have  been  done  by  British  soldiers  in  the  midst  of 
barbarous  races,  it  was  only  a  little  in  excess  of  the 
ordinary  odds.  They  were  not  there  exactly  to  fight 
— they  were  there  to  overawe  and  to  control.  The 
time  was  not  precisely  war  ;  but  it  was  little  more 
than  a  truce. 

The  small  corps  came  into  Kabul  much  as  the 
famous  uhlan  in  1870  rode  into  a  French  town.  He 
too  did  not  come  to  fight  ;  he  came  to  overawe  the 
citizens  into  carrying  out  his  orders.  The  Red 
Prince  was  never  far  behind  ;  and  in  the  meantime 
the  uhlan  took  military  occupation  of  the  city,  and  the 
practical  control  of  the  citizens.  But  the  uhlan  took 
his  chance  of  being  shot.  The  position  of  Sir  L. 
Cavagnari  was  not  exactly  this.  But  it  was  not  very 
far  from  it.  He  had  gone  into  the  midst  of  a 
turbulent  enemy,  in  advance  of  the  regular  army. 
He  held  a  nominal  political  office,  and  he  came  under 
the  terms  of  a  so-called  treaty.  But  he  came,  as  he 
well  knew,  with  his  life  in  his  hand.  I  shall  say 
nothing  to  dishonour  the  memory  of  a  brave,  but  wild 
man.  He  thought  that  audacity  might  supply  the 


AFGHANISTAN  169 

place  of  troops  ;  he  believed  that  his  death,  if  he  died, 
would  be  heroic.  He  has  died  as  a  brave  soldier 
dies,  at  the  head  of  his  men,  fighting  against  over- 
whelming odds  with  a  half-barbarous  enemy,  whom 
he  meant  to  conquer  and  whom  he  thought  to 
overawe.  But  he  has  died,  as  a  soldier  dies,  in  what 
was  virtually  an  act  of  war. 

This  so-called  envoy  was  in  truth  a  soldier  sent  out 
on  an  advanced  post,  into  a  country  seething  with 
civil  war,  from  which  the  invading  armies  had  scarcely 
withdrawn,  under  a  treaty  signed  by  a  mere  unrecog- 
nised pretender.  He  is  sent  into  a  city  which  admits 
no  other  European  on  any  pretence  ;  where,  as  Lord 
Lawrence  used  to  say,  no  European's  life  is  safe  for  an 
hour,  and  where  no  Ameer  could  protect  him  ;  amongst 
wild  mountaineers  and  fanatical  Moslems,  who  regard 
the  presence  of  an  Englishman  as  a  personal  humilia- 
tion. He  was  sent  out  with  a  small  force  really  to 
secure  the  advantages  of  a  war,  which  all  sensible  men 
said  was  far  from  ended.  To  treat  the  death  of  this 
soldier,  ordered  out  on  a  forlorn  hope  like  this,  as  the 
murder  of  an  ambassador  to  a  civilised  power,  to  be 
avenged  with  all  the  punctilio  of  European  diplomacy, 
is  mere  chicanery.  And  upon  this  chicanery  is  built 
up  the  claim  to  punish  the  last  efforts  of  Afghan  self- 
defence  as  mutiny,  rebellion,  and  murder. 

Even  this  chicanery  itself  is  not  consistently 
maintained.  The  legitimate  mode  of  redressing  the 
slaughter  of  an  envoy  is  to  make  war  upon  the  State, 
to  coerce  its  government,  and  to  obtain  satisfaction. 
But  war  with  a  State,  however  great  the  provocation, 
gives  no  right  to  hang  generals  and  priests,  who  head 
the  national  resistance.  If,  in  the  very  act  of  war, 
the  State  is  reduced  to  atoms,  and  its  government 
shattered  or  dissolved,  that  may  give  a  right  to  the 
injured  power  to  punish  the  actual  offenders  itself, 


170   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

and  to  set  up  a  government  of  its  own.  But  what 
we  now  complain  of  is,  not  the  punishment  of  the 
men  who  committed  the  outrage,  or  fair  attempts  to 
restore  a  government,  but  the  hanging  of  generals  and 
priests  whose  crime  is  to  have  animated  a  national 
defence,  the  proclaiming  that  all  who  resist  the  British 
invader  shall  be  treated  as  rebels,  and  the  setting 
rewards  upon  their  heads.  For  this  there  is  no 
justification  whatever  in  public  law,  in  morality,  or 
even  decency. 

Against  whom  are  these  men  rebels  ?  You  have 
seized  their  ruler  as  a  prisoner  :  from  the  first  he  was 
practically  a  hostage.  You  are  about  to  try  him  for 
his  life  on  the  charge  that  he  instigated  or  approved 
of  the  attack.  How  came  the  Afghan  soldiers  at 
Charasiab  to  be  mutineers  ?  They  fought  as  regular 
regiments  under  their  own  native  officers,  and  to  all 
appearances  at  the  secret  orders  of  their  nominal 
prince.  Where  is  the  government  that  they  defy  ? 
There  is  no  government,  or  shadow  of  government, 
except  the  British  army,  and  the  late  government 
which  is  now  its  prisoner.  And  the  British  army  are 
plainly  invaders  who  have  deposed  two  sovereigns  and 
destroyed  two  governments.  Are  the  men  you  hang 
the  authors  of  the  attack  on  the  embassy  ?  Where 
are  the  proofs  of  it  ?  What  is  the  evidence  that 
satisfies  a  court-martial,  on  fire  with  military  venge- 
ance ;  smarting  under  a  bitter  catastrophe,  and  the 
cruel  death  of  brave  comrades  ?  What  is  the  law  you 
use  in  your  drum-head  commissions,  whence  issue  no 
reports  that  you  do  not  countersign,  where  is  no  in- 
dependent or  civilian  witness  ?  The  men  whom  you 
hang,  you  pretend,  have  abetted  the  outrages  after  the 
fact,  by  resisting  the  invaders  of  their  country,  by 
taking  arms  against  the  British  forces. 

By  this  military  indictment,  every  soldier  in  the 


AFGHANISTAN  171 

Afghan  armies  supports  the  rebels ;  rebels  are  those 
who  abet  the  mutineers ;  mutineers  are  those  who 
resist  the  British  ;  and  those  who  resist  the  British 
are  guilty  (after  the  fact)  of  murder  of  the  British 
envoy.  Mutiny,  rebellion,  outlawry,  murder,  on  your 
lips  are  nothing  but  random  phrases,  tossed  together 
by  soldiers,  parading  the  terms  of  law  and  justice  ; 
who  really  come  to  conquer  a  brave,  but  turbulent 
race  ;  who  mean  to  kill  all  who  oppose  them,  and  to 
terrify  the  rest  into  the  show  of  submission.  The 
pretexts  that  justify  this  unsoldierlike  slaughter  of 
prisoners  of  war  are  chicanery,  worthy  of  Scroggs  and 
Jeffreys.  And  the  putting  men  to  death  by  legal 
chicanery  bears  an  ugly  name  in  English  history. 
The  meaning  of  it,  that  which  justifies  it  in  the  eyes 
of  soldiers,  and  probably  of  some  politicians,  is  this — 
that  since  the  difficulties  of  subduing  Afghanistan 
permanently  are  very  great,  and  the  forces  that  are 
sent  to  do  it  are  very  small,  and  since  Kabul  is  in  the 
heart  of  Asia  away  from  all  European  observation,  and 
veiled  by  the  "military  censure,"  recourse  must  be  had 
to  terrorism. 

It  would  be  better  to  give  up  this  affectation  of 
legality,  and,  if  it  is  necessary  to  herald  a  war  of 
conquest  with  proclamations  in  the  style  of  Oriental 
Caliphs,  to  open  thus  : — "  Be  it  known  to  all  men  in 
Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa,  in  the  name  of  the  Empress 
of  India,  and  so  forth.  Whereas,  for  sufficient  reasons, 
we  have  determined  tosubdue  the  people  of  Afghanistan, 
we  hereby  warn  you  not  to  resist  our  victorious  armies. 
If  you  oppose  our  good  pleasure,  we  shall  hang  some  of 
you,  until  the  others  obey  and  submit.  Such  part  of  the 
city  as  we  think  fit  we  shall  destroy,  and  it  is  only  in 
mercy  that  we  do  not  destroy  it  entirely.  We  shall  kill 
and  burn  until  the  people  come  to  know  that  our  will  is 
irresistible.  Imperium  et  Liber tas.  Rule,  Britannia  !  " 


172    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

I  am  not  making  any  general  charge  of  cruelty 
against  our  soldiers  and  generals.  We  have  no 
evidence  that  they  acted  in  the  thirst  for  blood,  nor 
in  any  lust  of  outrage.  Fortunately  things  are  not 
so  bad  as  that.  English  gentlemen  are  not  suddenly 
converted  into  MouraviefFs,  Gallifets,  and  Chefket 
Pashas.  Nor  do  I  assert  that  they  acted  worse  than 
soldiers  always  act  who  are  left  to  themselves  and 
permitted  to  hang  civilians.  Their  moderation  in 
hanging  contrasts  favourably  with  that  of  Russian  or 
Turkish  generals  suppressing  an  insurrection.  My 
charge  is  a  perfectly  definite  one.  It  is  that  they 
are  permitted  to  hang  people  at  all  as  rebels  ;  that 
they  should  be  suffered  to  set  rewards  on  the  heads  of 
soldiers  and  generals  who  meet  them  in  open  battle ; 
that  they  should  be  allowed  to  execute  prisoners  in 
cold  blood  (short  of  any  case  of  specific  murder  proved 
against  the  criminal)  ;  that  they  have  power  by 
proclamation  to  convert  the  national  defence  of  a 
free  people  into  rebellion  and  mutiny ;  that  they 
should  be  left  to  be  the  sole  judges  of  what  constituted 
this  offence.  Lastly,  my  complaint  is  that  British 
officers  sent  to  invade  and  conquer  an  independent 
people  should  be  authorised  to  do  so  by  terrorism — by 
the  use,  that  is,  not  of  their  swords  and  rifles  in  battle, 
but  by  the  rope  and  the  torch  when  no  one  is  left  to 
fight. 

To  all  this  the  one  defence  is,  as  always  —  the 
prestige  of  our  Indian  Empire,  the  extreme  paucity  of 
our  forces  in  Asia.  They  say,  The  troops  we  can 
spare  to  hold  vast  territories  are  so  few,  the  importance 
of  our  Eastern  Empire  is  so  enormous,  the  difficulties 
of  subduing  vast  mountain  tracts  with  two  or  three 
thousand  Europeans  are  so  great  that  we  cannot  be 
bound  by  European  law,  that  we  can  only  exist — by 
terrorism  in  fact.  Now  to  say  that  it  is  impossible 


AFGHANISTAN  173 

to  apply  the  public  law  of  Europe  in  the  East  is  no 
answer  at  all.  Our  very  charge  is,  that  they  do  apply 
the  forms  and  fictions  of  European  law,  whenever  it 
suits  them,  and  just  so  far  as  it  suits  them,  and  throw 
these  forms  off  the  moment  they  tell  on  the  wrong 
side.  In  dealing  with  Oriental  races,  it  has  become 
a  settled  practice  with  some  British  Governments  to 
assert  and  exact  all  the  rights  that  can  be  grasped 
under  the  strict  letter  of  European  diplomacy,  and 
to  recognise  none  of  the  obligations  and  limits  of 
European  law,  whenever  they  cease  to  be  convenient. 
The  dilemma  is  this.  If  they  go  to  Kabul  under 
the  rights  of  public  law,  they  are  acting  there  in 
defiance  of  public  law.  If  they  deny  that  public  law 
can  be  applied  to  Afghans,  how  ludicrous  is  the  plea 
of  the  sacred  person  of  our  envoy,  the  mutiny  against 
a  friendly  prince,  the  constructive  rebellion,  and  the 
ex  post  facto  murders  ?  The  public  law  of  Europe  is, 
perhaps,  in  all  its  forms,  or  in  all  its  rules,  not  capable 
of  strict  application  in  Asia.  But  to  a  civilised  and 
honourable  people  that  cannot  mean  that  they  are 
exempt  from  all  law  in  Asia,  from  the  spirit  and 
principle  of  public  law  as  well  as  from  its  forms  ;  that 
cannot  justify  them  in  using  the  terms  of  public  law 
in  order  to  entrap  and  mystify  Asiatic  rulers,  and  then 
to  laugh  at  the  very  essence  of  public  law,  if  it  hinders 
their  own  objects.  To  a  great  people  at  the  head  of 
modern  civilisation,  the  difficulties  of  applying  the 
public  law  of  Europe  to  people  in  Asia  involve  most 
scrupulous  care  to  follow  that  which  is  beyond  and 
behind  all  public  law  in  Europe,  a  real  and  healthy 
sense  of  equity,  to  look  at  the  things  as  they  are,  to 
treat  half-civilised  races  of  different  religion  and  habits, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  a  wise  understanding  of 
their  prejudices  and  their  ignorances,  to  bear  ourselves 
always  as  their  guides  in  civilisation  and  justice. 


174   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Now  throughout  this  Afghan  war  (it  is  not  the 
first  nor  the  last  war  that  has  been  waged  by  England 
on  that  plan)  it  is  laid  down  on  system  that  our  troops 
are  to  enter  the  enemies'  country,  whether  they  be 
independent  tribes,  rebels,  mutineers,  or  robbers  is 
immaterial ;  in  any  case  the  country  is  treated  as  in 
"  insurrection "  and  general  outlawry  ;  and,  as  the 
troops  are  too  few  to  occupy  and  permanently  hold 
so  vast  an  area,  they  are  to  kill  and  burn,  ravage  and 
destroy  so  far  as  may  be  requisite  to  secure  submission. 
They  are  to  behave  just  as  Edward  I.  behaved  when 
he  was  conquering  Wales  or  invading  Scotland,  just 
as  Caesar  behaved  in  Gaul,  or  Cortes  in  Mexico. 
That  is  to  say,  they  are  to  hold  themselves  free  from 
all  the  laws  of  war  as  understood  in  modern  Europe  ; 
they  are  not  bound  to  fight  as  civilised  nations  fight ; 
if  they  are  too  few  to  subdue  the  country  physically, 
they  must  terrorise  it  into  submission  ;  the  end  is 
conquest,  and  any  means  leading  to  that  end  are 
good. 

Now  I  say  that  no  circumstances,  no  diplomatic 
outrages,  no  pieces  of  paper  or  treaties  with  mountain 
chiefs,  can  justify  this  system  of  conquest  by  terrorism. 
The  spirit  of  evil  is  on  it,  everywhere  and  always  ;  in 
Asia,  or  in  Europe,  in  the  mountains  of  Afghanistan, 
or  in  the  valleys  of  the  Balkans.  If  your  troops  are 
too  few  to  conquer  and  hold  a  territory,  by  the  public 
laws  of  peace  and  of  war,  you  should  keep  out  of  it ; 
if  the  tribes  you  wish  to  annex  do  not  understand 
modern  diplomacy,  it  is  no  ground  that  you  should 
sink  to  the  morality  of  a  hill  chief.  To  tell  us  that 
the  interests  of  India  are  paramount,  and  that  to 
save  our  power  and  our  credit  there,  all  things  are 
permitted,  and  that  all  morality  is  idle  ;  this  is  indeed 
to  demoralise  the  nation,  to  turn  our  Indian  Empire 
into  a  curse  greater  to  Englishmen  than  her  Mexican 


AFGHANISTAN  175 

and  Peruvian  conquests  were  to  Spain  ;  it  is  to  teach 
a  free  people  the  creed  of  the  pirate.  Let  the  old 
watchwords  be  erased  from  all  English  flags  :  Dieu  et 
man  Drolt — Honi  suit — and  the  rest,  are  stale  enough. 
We  will  have  a  new  imperial  standard  for  the  new 
Empress  of  Asia,  and  emblazon  on  it — Imperium  et 
Barbaries. 

It  concerns  the  honour  of  this  people,  it  especially 
concerns  the  credit  of  Parliament,  that  the  political 
and  international  side  of  these  foreign  wars  should  not 
be  resigned  carte  blanche  to  soldiers  with  a  roving 
commission  to  conquer,  free  from  all  reference  to 
the  law  of  nations,  and  practically  exempt  from  the 
rules  of  war.  Above  all,  it  is  monstrous  that  they 
should  be  permitted  to  draw  round  them  a  strict 
cordon  of  secrecy,  and  exclude  all  information  of  an 
independent  or  civilian  kind,  even  to  the  civilian 
government  they  serve.  It  is  an  idle  pretence  that 
the  secrecy  was  demanded  in  the  military  interests 
of  the  campaign.  It  was  enforced  to  exclude  criticism, 
to  avoid  observation,  to  withdraw  the  acts  of  the 
generals  from  the  control  of  the  civil  government,  of 
the  Parliament,  of  the  nation. 

No  doubt  generals  in  the  field  delight  in  nothing 
so  much  as  in  carte  blanche,  the  exclusion  of  all 
political  control,  the  suppression  of  all  criticism,  the 
absorption  of  every  force  civil,  political,  legal,  and 
moral  into  the  one  convenient  autocracy  —  Martial 
Law  as  understood  at  headquarters.  Of  course  these 
heady  captains,  with  the  thirst  of  Alexander  and 
Napoleon  in  their  veins,  would  be  only  too  happy  to 
conquer  all  Asia  on  such  terms,  and  career  over  the 
planet  so  long  as  at  home  we  found  them  in  men  and 
in  guns,  and  asked  no  awkward  questions.  But  it 
behoves  a  responsible  government  and  a  free  Parlia- 
ment to  beware  that  these  men  never  shall  be  let 


176   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

loose  on  a  province  or  a  nation,  to  drag  the  name  of 
England  through  blood  and  dust,  to  shut  themselves 
up  in  a  sealed  district  on  some  idle  military  excuse, 
and  then  to  set  to  work  with  fire  and  sword,  gun 
and  halter,  until  they  have  tamed  .another  semi- 
civilised  and  independent  people.  Such  things  may 
cause  joy  in  military  clubs,  and  their  admirers  ;  it 
may  delight  those  who  believe  that  England  can 
civilise  the  East  by  force  ;  but  it  is  utterly  dis- 
honouring to  a  nation  such  as  England,  and  it 
disgusts  and  shames  the  manly  spirit  of  our  thought- 
ful working  people. 

Again  I  say,  I  do  not  charge  our  soldiers  and 
generals  with  promiscuous  cruelty.  Very  far  from 
it.  I  know  and  honour  amongst  them  many  most 
gentle  and  generous  men.  They  often  show  con- 
spicuous self-control,  and  a  quiet  mercifulness  worthy 
of  truly  brave  natures.  They  almost  never  lose  their 
heads,  and  seldom  indeed  do  they  catch  a  blood  lust 
like  French  or  Turkish  generals  in  an  insurrection. 
Personally  at  home  we  all  know  them  as  English 
gentlemen  and  just  men.  But  I  complain  that  they 
are  often  set  to  tasks  such  as  no  soldier  should  have 
given  to  him,  and  granted  a  licence  such  as  should  be 
trusted  to  no  general.  One  could  not  trust  the  arch- 
angel Michael  to  be  just,  or  the  seraph  Abdiel  to  be 
faithful,  in  a  position  so  trying. 

Our  soldiers  are  sent  into  a  district,  one  against  a 
thousand  or  ten  thousand,  usually  heated  with  some 
tale  of  outrage  to  avenge,  and  knowing  that  nothing 
but  desperate  energy  can  enable  them  to  win,  despising 
their  enemy  as  "niggers,"  and  utterly  unable  to  look 
on  them  as  soldiers  ;  they  are  sent  into  a  province 
or  a  kingdom  alone,  without  any  political  control  or 
civilian  witness,  and  they  are  simply  ordered  to 
chastise  the  rebels,  or  crush  the  resistance.  What 


AFGHANISTAN  177 

would  have  been  the  consequences  had  the  Red 
Prince  been  let  loose  upon  France  without  any  civil 
control  or  witness,  with  orders  carte  blanche  to  bring 
Frenchmen  to  their  senses,  and  to  be  his  own  Vattel 
and  Foreign  Secretary  ?  Prince  Bismarck  took  care 
to  keep  his  generals  within  bounds.  Had  he  not 
done  so,  Europe  would  be  ringing  now  with  horror. 
What  then  must  it  be  when  soldiers,  on  fire  to  avenge 
some  outrage,  outnumbered  as  the  Spaniards  were  out- 
numbered in  Mexico,  are  sent  in  upon  a  "  nigger " 
people,  with  all  the  physical  loathing  of  race,  and  the 
inhuman  prompting  of  their  religion,  to  tame  an 
insurgent  tribe  ?  Angels  could  not  be  trusted  to  do 
the  horrid  work,  and  the  natural  result  ensues. 

In  spite  of  the  conspicuous  coolness  and  generosity 
of  our  soldiers,  the  fact  remains  that  they  never  meet 
their  equals  or  a  civilised  foe.  A  generation  has 
passed  since  Englishmen  met  in  fight  white  men, 
and  even  those  were  hardly  of  European  civilisation. 
They  never  fight  under  the  rules  and  conditions  of 
modern  war.  They  hardly  ever  fight  with  a  foe, 
whom  they  treat  as  an  honourable  foreign  enemy. 
They  are  for  ever  engaging  in  battues  of  black  skins, 
red  skins,  brown  skins,  "niggers,"  or  savages  of  some 
kind.  Their  enemies  are  almost  always  "  rebels,"  or 
"  mutineers,"  or  "  insurgents,"  or  "  marauders,"  with 
whom  they  do  not  pretend  to  hold  the  conventional 
laws  of  warfare.  Our  officers,  therefore,  are  almost 
always  partly  executioners,  and  partly  criminal  police, 
as  well  as  soldiers.  They  not  only  use  their  swords, 
but  they  have  ever  in  their  train  ropes  and  halters, 
gibbets  and  cats,  and  all  the  apparatus  of  a  Russian 
army  in  Poland.  They  seldom  fight  without  killing 
prisoners  in  cold  blood  after  all  resistance  has  ceased. 
They  blow  them  from  guns  by  platoons,  they  hang 
them  from  the  first  tree,  they  shoot  them  in  squads, 

N 


178  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

they  flog  them  by  scores,  they  burn  villages  whole- 
sale ;  they  hold  drum-head  courts-martial  on  priests 
and  officials  ;  they  proclaim  martial  law  at  their  own 
free-will.1 

Again  I  repeat  that  I  do  not  charge  our  officers  or 
men  with  wanton  cruelty,  nor  do  I  say  that  they 
become  personally  savage,  except  in  rare  cases.  Nor 
do  1  say  that  they  do  these  things  without  general 
orders,  or  without  a  very  fair  show  of  actual  insurrection 
and  real  outrage.  But  this,  as  a  fact,  is  the  horrid 
work  the  British  army  is  usually  called  on  to  do 
when  it  enters  the  field.  It  is  one  of  the  curses,  no 
doubt,  of  our  Empire ;  one  of  the  burdens  to  be 
borne  by  a  nation  which  builds  its  greatness  on  vast 
continents  of  half-civilised  people.  I  wonder  that  the 
fine  stuff  of  English  gentlemen  can  resist,  as  it  does, 
the  contagion.  I  am  amazed  that  so  few  of  them 
get  brutalised  by  their  work.  There  were  men,  we 
know,  in  Jamaica  who  seemed  to  delight  in  hanging 
and  flogging  the  blacks.  And  I  myself  have  heard 
a  young  officer  say  that  what  pulled  him  through  a 
desperate  wound  in  the  Indian  "Mutiny"  was  the 
crawling  to  the  window  each  morning  to  see  the 
niggers  hung — the  "niggers"  being  prisoners  taken 
in  the  battle  where  he  got  his  wound. 

But.  not  the  less  necessary  is  it,  for  a  civilised 
government  and  people,  to  control  with  a  strong 
hand  the  appeal  to  military  law.  There  is  that  of 
the  wild  beast  in  all  fighting  men  heated  with  battle, 
that  they  ought  almost  never  to  be  turned,  with  the 
blood  still  hot  upon  their  hands,  into  governors, 
executioners,  judges.  This  Martial  Law  is  a  big  word 
for  a  black  thing.  It  means  terrorism,  slaughter, 

1  Much  of  this  has  been  repeated  mutatis  mutandis  in  our  various 
African  wars,  where  again  we  were  fighting  against  raw  levies  and 
native  races.  See  the  Essay  on  Martial  Lcnv  (1908). 


AFGHANISTAN  179 

violence — within  such  limits  as  a  soldier  thinks 
convenient.  It  is  strange  that  of  all  nations  on  the 
earth,  except  possibly  the  Russian,  the  English  nation 
is  the  one  which  most  often  proclaims  Martial  Law. 
The  British  army,  of  all  armies  in  the  world,  is  the 
one  which  is  most  often  hanging,  shooting,  or 
punishing  prisoners  of  war.  And  of  all  civil  Govern- 
ments on  earth,  unless,  perhaps,  that  of  the  Czar,  the 
Parliament  of  this  free  nation  is  the  one  which  is  the 
readiest  to  hand  over  countries  and  provinces  to  the 
absolute  will  of  a  soldier  flushed  with  victory. 

If  these  words,  quite  undeniable  as  they  are,  cause 
pain  and  anger  in  the  minds  of  honest  men,  the  fault 
is  not  mine.  I  do  not  pretend  to  be  a  man  of  peace 
at  any  price,  nor  do  I  deny  the  necessity  for  soldiers 
and  the  duty  of  recognising  war.  But  I  have  a  right 
to  appeal  to  the  civilian  sentiments  of  civilised 
citizens,  and  to  ask  that  our  army  shall  be  held 
strictly  in  civil  control  and  consistently  used  in  a 
civilised  spirit.  No  honourable  soldier  can  refuse 
such  a  claim.  As  to  the  men  of  blood  and  of 
swagger,  we  care  as  little  for  their  wrath  as  for  their 
insolence.  They  cannot  rise,  as  a  French  statesman 
said,  to  the  level  of  our  disdain.  Men  who  fulfil  their 
civil  duties  in  the  face  of  any  opposition,  need  not 
be  dismayed  by  the  courage  which  hurries  back  to 
banquets,  balls,  and  welcomes,  from  the  slaughter  of 
"niggers,"  from  wild  raids  across  savage  districts  in 
expeditions  which,  like  a  tiger-hunt,  combine  at  once 
a  battue  and  a  picnic.  Such  men  entirely  mistake 
the  true  temper  of  their  fellow-citizens  at  home.  The 
opinion  of  the  profession  or  the  narrow  class  that  feeds 
it  is  not  all  in  this  island.  There  are  serious  men 
here,  quite  as  eager  for  the  honour  of  their  country  as 
they  are,  who  have  thought  about  war,  its  history,  its 
duties,  and  trials  as  much  as  they  have,  who  turn  with 


i8o  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

a  sick  heart  from  this  never-ending  tale  of  invasion, 
slaughter,  repression,  military  executions,  and  martial 
law. 

For  a  generation  the  Temple  of  Janus  for  us  has 
hardly  once  been  closed.  No  year  passes  that  British 
troops  are  not  fighting  somewhere,  and  never  a  white 
or  a  civilised  foe,  and  rarely  indeed  in  civilised  warfare. 
To  us  these  men  come  home,  yet  honourable  men  no 
doubt,  and  unpolluted  with  savagery,  but  still  reeking 
with  the  blood  of  men  killed  in  unjust  quarrels,  of 
men  put  to  death  in  cold  blood,  butchered  in  the  loose 
hubbub  of  military  retribution.  Will  some  member 
of  Parliament  exact  a  true  return  of  the  prisoners 
taken  in  battle  in  these  African  and  Asian  wars,  and 
of  the  punishments  inflicted  by  military  justice  ?  How 
many  of  the  hundreds  of  thousands  of  fighting  men 
who  have  so  lately  met  our  armies  in  battle,  have  been 
taken  prisoners  in  the  field  ?  How  many  of  such 
prisoners  have  been  honourably  treated  as  Europeans 
treat  European  prisoners  of  war  ?  What  are  these 
wars  in  which  we  never  hear  of  prisoners,  in  which 
prisoners  of  war  are  systematically  tried  by  courts- 
martial  ?  Have  we  no  member  on  either  side  of  our 
docile  parties,  who  will  tear  open  the  secrets  of  the 
"  military  censor,"  and  drag  before  the  nation  the  true 
story  of  this  hanging  of  "niggers  "  ? 

There  are  men  at  home  to  whom  these  things  are 
never  gilded  by  displays  of  personal  daring,  who  hear 
the  groans  of  the  prisoners  in  their  agony  amidst  all 
the  cheers  of  admiring  friends.  The  vast  mass  of  our 
working  people,  in  town  and  in  country,  loathe  these 
criminal  wars,  and  turn  from  the  instruments  of  these 
wild  acts  of  retribution.  Bella  gerl  placuit^  nullos 
habitura  triumphos^  said  the  noble  Roman — there  are 
wars  too  odious  to  deserve  a  triumph.  Our  soldiers 
too  often  forget  this  maxim,  and  the  stern  warning  it 


AFGHANISTAN  181 

conveys.  There  is  no  response  in  the  mass  of  the 
nation  to  the  thoughtless  cheers  of  the  idle,  when 
executioners  and  hangmen  return  to  claim  a  triumph. 
They  may  have  done  their  duty,  and  may  have  done 
it  without  passion  :  but  we  do  not  care  to  see  them  ; 
and  we  ask  of  the  Government  that  sent  them  by 
what  law  or  right  these  things  were  done. 

To  all  that  is  said  there  is  always  one  monotonous 
reply — the  prestige  of  our  Asiatic  position — the  critical 
necessities  of  our  Indian  Empire.  If  this  means,  that 
having  a  great  possession  in  the  East,  its  importance 
is  such  that  neither  justice  nor  morality  has  anything 
to  do  with  the  matter,  then  this  nation  will  sink  to 
the  Spain  of  the  Philips,  if  it  ever  accepts  such  a 
doctrine.  I  know  there  are  politicians  on  both  sides 
who  have  quietly  made  up  their  minds,  that  having 
got  India  they  mean  to  keep  it  by  any  means  and  all 
means  which  come  to  hand  ;  and  whatever  has  to  be 
paid  in  life,  or  in  waste,  in  guilt,  or  in  shame,  will 
be  paid  to  the  bitter  end.  To  such  men  we  have  but 
one  short  answer — we  do  not  argue  with  Pirates :  we 
call  upon  civilised  mankind  to  judge  them. 

It  is  just  because  we  have  a  deep  sense  of  all  that 
we  ought  to  do  in  India,  it  is  just  for  the  sake  of 
India  itself,  that  we  condemn  this  military  terrorism. 
It  is  not  we  who  say — Perish  India,  or  who  crudely 
call  out  for  its  summary  abandonment.  For  my  part, 
I  recognise  all  the  duties  which  our  presence  there  has 
imposed  on  us,  and  I  desire  to  fulfil  those  duties  of 
good  government  and  upright  dealing  at  every  sacrifice 
and  with  all  our  might.  It  is  because  I  desire  a  just 
rule  and  the  firm  and  peaceful  settlement  of  India, 
such  as  may  lead  to  the  ultimate  establishment  of  real 
native  governments,  that  I  protest  against  the  system 
of  these  constant  wars  of  retribution.  How  is  the 
government  of  India  ever  to  rise  to  the  level  of  a 


182  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

just  and  beneficent  power,  or  to  educate  its  people  to 
govern  themselves,  when,  year  after  year,  it  is  occupied 
in  successive  wars  of  aggression  and  repression,  of 
terrorism  or  vengeance  ?  How  are  officers  to  become 
the  peaceful  guardians  of  a  contented  empire,  when 
they  are  for  ever  returning,  hot  with  revenge  and 
triumph,  from  a  promiscuous  battue  of  half-barbarous 
«  rebels  "  ? 

The  day  when  the  white  and  the  dark  race  shall 
feel  that  they  are  fellow-citizens,  instead  of  conquerors 
and  conquered,  masters  and  subjects,  is  indeed  in- 
definitely adjourned  by  these  wild  raids  amongst  wild 
tribes  in  the  spirit  of  Cortes  or  Pizarro.  The  bad 
blood  which  these  raids  enkindle  in  every  vein,  the 
desperate  sense  of  race-feud  which  they  breed  in  the 
native,  and  the  fierce  temper  of  disdain  which  they 
rouse  in  us — these  are  the  real  perils  and  difficulties  of 
the  Indian  Empire.  Fed  by  this  slaughter  and  violence 
and  lawlessness,  that  empire  will  always  be  precarious, 
will  always  be  sinking  to  a  lower  level.  To  believe 
that  an  empire  can  for  ever  subsist  on  terrorism,  be 
the  terrorism  only  in  reserve,  is  to  believe  that  the 
most  cynical  of  Turkish  Pashas  or  Russian  Prefects 
are  wise  politicians  and  true  patriots. 

If  we  are  asked  what  do  we  mean  by  terrorism^  the 
question  is  easily  answered.  Terrorism  consists  in  the 
killing,  torturing,  or  punishing  A,  not  for  any  crime 
committed  by  A,  but  in  order  to  terrify  B,  C,  and  D 
into  submitting  to  your  will.  That  is  terrorism  j  and 
it  is,  always  and  everywhere,  evil  and  abominable, 
in  Europe  or  in  Asia.  No  circumstances  can  justify 
it.  No  object  can  excuse  it.  And  that  is  what,  we 
say,  our  troops  have  done  in  Kabul,  and  what  our 
Government  has  authorised  them  to  do.  If  it  be 
objected  that  all  war  is  terrorism,  the  answer  again  is 
simple.  War  has  its  recognised  laws  as  much  as 


AFGHANISTAN  183 

peace,  and  they  must  be  submitted  to  in  Asia  as  much 
as  in  Europe.  If  it  be  said  that  they  cannot  be  applied 
in  Asia,  or  are  not  understood  by  barbarians,  then  the 
spirit  of  these  laws  must  be  followed,  if  we  cannot 
follow  their  letter.  They  are  laws  like  the  laws  of 
honour  which  bind  soldiers  as  such,  which  distinguish 
them  from  pirates,  banditti,  and  cut-throats,  wherever 
they  may  fight.  They  are  laws  which  ought  to  bind 
the  British  soldier  as  a  part  of  his  own  self-respect, 
quite  apart  from  their  being  enforced  by  adverse 
opinion,  or  formulated  in  words  by  the  enemy.  And 
the  chief  and  centre  of  these  laws  are  these  : — Thou 
shalt  not  kill  helpless  prisoners  of  war  j  thou  shalt  not 
kill  for  civil  offences,  as  distinct  from  military  attack. 
Both  are  summed  up  in  this.  You  may  use  your 
swords  and  your  rifles  in  battle — you  may  not  use 
gibbets  and  ropes  in  cold  blood.  And  we  tell  these 
heroes  of  the  drum-head  and  the  halter  that,  whether 
it  be  in  Asia  or  in  Europe,  in  Africa  or  in  America, 
they  who  do  these  things  cease  to  be  soldiers,  and  sink 
to  the  level  of  hangmen  or  cut-throats.  Longitude 
and  latitude  have  nothing  to  do  with  it :  nor  have  the 
habits  and  ideas  of  the  particular  enemy.  It  is  a 
matter  of  personal  self-respect,  binding  on  gentlemen 
and  on  soldiers  everywhere. 


VII 

THE   ANTI-AGGRESSION   LEAGUE 

I 

Before  the  second  ministry  of  Mr.  Gladstone  had  been  in  power 
for  two  years,  a  movement  was  started  to  check  the  con- 
tinuance of  the  aggressive  policy  abroad  which  it  was 
hoped  the  Mid -Lothian  campaign  had  suppressed.  It 
originated  with  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  the  late  Lord 
Hob  house,  and  many  Members  of  Parliament,  journalists, 
and  political  speakers  who  were  dissatisjied  with  the  Zulu 
and  Transvaal  wars,  the  Borneo  annexation,  and  other 
expeditions.  After  many  private  meetings,  a  public 
conference  took  place  in  February  1882,  at  which  Mr. 
John  Morley  presided,  the  speakers  being  himself, 
Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  Lord  Hobhouse,  several  Liberal 
M.P.'s,  and  myself.  Some  twenty  Members  were 
present,  including  three  who  have  been  Cabinet  Ministers 
in  the  present  Administration.  A  full  account  of  the 
speeches  and  of  the  policy  of  the  League  was  published 
in  March  1882,  entitled  And  -  Aggression  League 
Pamphlets,  No.  i.  //  gave  the  names  of  some  thirty-six 
Members  and  upwards  of  forty  Professors,  writers,  and 
politicians  as  farming  the  General  Council. 

From  this  Pamphlet  I  extract  a  few  sentences  of  the 
speech  I  made  at  the  Conference  (1908). 

THE  vast  increase  of  the  Empire  in  Asia  and  in  Africa 

has   been   effected    almost  entirely   by   war.       If  we 

184 


THE  ANTI-AGGRESSION  LEAGUE    185 

count  up  the  years  since  1832,  and  set  against  each 
year  the  wars  in  which  we  had  been  engaged,  we 
should  find  there  were  more  wars  than  there  were 
years  j  that  is,  if  now  and  then  a  year  might  be  found 
free  from  war,  the  next  gave  us  two,  three,  and  even 
four  wars  for  one  year.  If  we  take  a  period  of  fifty 
years,  we  shall  find  that  in  at  least  ten  of  these  years 
we  have  been  engaged  in  warlike  expeditions  in 
Africa ;  during  ten  of  them  we  have  been  engaged 
in  war  with  China.  During  eight  of  these  years  we 
have  had  wars  with  the  Afghans ;  during  ten  years 
we  were  occupied  with  wars  in  India  j  during  four  or 
five  in  New  Zealand  ;  and  during  as  many  more  in 
Burmah,  Japan,  Persia,  or  Malayland.  During  fifty 
years  I  reckon  that  England  has  been  engaged  in  more 
than  forty  distinct  wars,  without  counting  either  the 
Crimean  war  or  the  constant  sputtering  of  war  with 
the  Indian  hill  tribes. 

Between  1850  and  1860  we  were  engaged  in 
almost  incessant  war  in  every  part  of  Asia,  from  the 
Black  Sea  to  the  Yellow  Sea.  The  fact  is  that 
England  is  very  rarely  at  peace,  and  has  more  wars 
than  any  other  nation  in  Europe,  not  even  except- 
ing Russia.  If  we  study  the  list  of  years  of  war, 
we  see  a  very  significant  fact :  there  are  some  years 
in  which  these  Asiatic,  African,  and  Colonial  wars 
seem  suddenly  to  lull.  They  ceased  during  the  three 
years  of  the  great  Crimean  war  j  they  ceased  after 
the  great  European  revolutions  of  1848  and  1849  ; 
they  ceased  during  the  great  German  war  in  1866  ; 
and  they  ceased  again  during  and  after  the  great  war 
in  France  of  1870-1871.  During  periods  of  great 
danger  or  watchfulness  at  home,  they  cease.  That 
proves  they  are  under  our  own  control.  We  can 
abstain  from  them  when  our  safety  and  policy  demand 
it.  The  word  is  passed  to  our  prancing  pro-consuls 


1 86   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

and  bold  ambassadors  in  Asia  and  in  Africa  that  they 
must  be  quiet  at  their  peril,  and  immediately  peace 
reigns  on  all  our  remote  frontiers  ! 

In  old  Rome  there  was  the  ancient  Temple  of 
Janus,  with  its  gate  open  in  time  of  war,  and  closed 
only  in  time  of  peace.  I  sometimes  wish  that  we  too 
had  our  Temple  of  Janus  in  Palace  Yard,  so  that  our 
senators,  as  they  go  down  to  take  their  places,  might 
see  the  gate  so  continuously  open,  and  might  remember 
that  we  were  still  at  war. 

Something  more  is  needed  to  check  war  than  the 
questions  or  remonstrances  of  independent  Members 
of  Parliament.  They  tell  us  how  much  they  need 
support  from  without.  And  our  movement  just  offers 
such  support.  It  proposes  a  union  of  men  of  affairs 
with  men  who  address  opinion  through  the  press,  or 
by  books,  or  by  the  pulpit.  A  persistent  tendency  to 
war,  aggression,  and  commercial  adventure  can  only 
be  held  in  check  by  a  systematic  effort  to  maintain 
peace  and  international  justice.  The  criticisms  of 
politicians  require  behind  them  an  organic  and  con- 
structive theory  of  a  policy  fitted  for  an  industrial 
and  civilised  age.  We  need  a  matured  system  of 
international  morality  —  a  practical  scheme  for  an 
effective  policy  of  Peace. 

Such  we  make  bold  to  think  may  be  found  in  the 
printed  papers  and  programmes  of  the  intended 
League,  which  will  bring  together  men  of  influence 
in  the  House  and  the  country  alongside  of  men  like 
our  Chairman  and  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  who  in  their 
works  have  elaborated  and  illustrated  the  doctrines 
from  the  point  of  view  of  social  philosophy.  We 
contemplate  no  abstract  Doctrine  of  Peace ;  no 
specific  cut-and-dried  scheme  of  constitutional  change ; 
no  arbitrary  limitation  of  the  Executive.  We  seek 
to  make  the  Executive  conscious  of  its  responsibility 


THE  ANTI- AGGRESSION  LEAGUE    187 

to  public  opinion  ;  not  to  impose  chains  on  it  in  the 
exercise  of  its  duty,  but  to  make  it  feel  that  it  will  be 
judged  according  to  its  deserts.  Nor  are  we  hostile 
to  the  present  Government.  Our  movement  counts 
many  of  the  warmest  friends  of  it.  But  if  we  find 
men  like  Mr.  Gladstone,  Lord  Granville,  and  Lord 
Hartington,  so  continually  overpowered  by  the  self- 
will  of  officials,  or  the  interests  of  certain  classes,  we 
think  they  need  help  to  enable  them  to  maintain  a 
policy  of  peace  and  justice.  Had  they  had  it,  they 
might  have  found  it  easier  to  withdraw  from  the 
Transvaal  and  from  Afghanistan,  when  they  knew  it 
was  their  duty  to  do  so. 


II 


The  new  League  was  hardly  constituted  when  in  the  summer  of 
1882  our  entanglements  in  Egypt  threatened  to  involve 
us  in  a  new  war  with  practical  annexation.  The  League 
appealed  to  public  opinion,  and  especially  to  the  working 
class,  to  prevent  such  a  catastrophe.  A  great  meeting 
was  held  in  the  Memorial  Hall  on  June  26,  at  which  I 
was  asked  to  give  an  address  to  specially  invited  repre- 
sentatives of  Trades  Union  and  Labour  Associations.  It 
ivas  published  as  Anti-Aggression  League  Pamphlets, 
No.  2. 

From  this  report  I  extract  the  following  passages : — 

When,  two  years  ago,  the  great  appeal  to  the 
nation  was  made,  we  thought  it  was  decided  for  ever 
that  England  should  renounce  the  policy  of  injustice, 
and  cease  to  undertake  the  control  of  half  the  human 
race  in  the  name  of  civilisation  in  general  and  Great 


188  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Britain  in  particular.  We  were  all,  perhaps,  a  little 
too  confident  that  the  policy  we  rejected  was  really 
abandoned.  Mr.  Gladstone,  and  almost  every  member 
of  his  Ministry,  and  his  supporters  in  the  House,  were 
pledged  up  to  the  eyes  to  repudiate  it.  But  the 
authors  and  agents  of  the  system  remained.  In  a 
country  like  ours,  with  world -wide  commercial 
interests,  with  an  Empire  that  is  scattered  over  the 
planet  as  no  empire  in  history  ever  was,  with  traditions 
of  conquest  and  domination,  founded  by  war  and  main- 
tained by  enterprise,  it  was  inevitable  that  the  classes 
who  had  created  and  worked  the  system  should  struggle 
to  maintain  it. 

The  zealous  governors  and  fiery  consuls,  pushed  on 
by  the  resident  traders  seeking  new  markets,  the  vice- 
roys and  envoys,  and  ambassadors,  trained  to  dictate  to 
kings,  and  to  extend  the  Empire  by  policy  or  force, 
the  adventurous  spirits  who  form  an  irregular  band  of 
pioneers  in  advance  of  the  limits  of  the  Empire,  the 
permanent  foreign  and  colonial  staff,  all  made  it 
difficult  for  Mr.  Gladstone  and  his  party  to  carry  out 
the  pledges  they  had  given.  It  needed  incessant 
remonstrances  from  the  Press  and  the  people  before 
Afghanistan,  Kabul,  and  Candahar  were  finally  got  rid 
of;  the  shameful  war  with  the  Basutos  in  Africa  was 
still  suffered  to  drag  on ;  the  author  of  the  Zulu  war 
— Sir  Bartle  Frere — was  not  immediately  recalled  ; 
the  unjust  imprisonment  of  the  Zulu  king  was  still 
enforced ;  the  unjust  annexation  of  the  Transvaal 
country  was  still  maintained,  till  it  ended  in  a  shameful 
and  iniquitous  war. 

The  League,  whose  objects  I  am  to  present  to  you 
to-night,  is  far  from  designing  any  opposition  to  the 
Ministry  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  or  any  wish  to  embarrass 
it.  We  are  most  of  us  steady  supporters  of  the 
Liberal  party,  and  no  man  could  more  heartily  desire 


THE  ANTI-AGGRESSION  LEAGUE    189 

than  I  did  myself  the  great  change  in  policy  which 
brought  Mr.  Gladstone  to  power.  And,  with  his 
work  in  Ireland  and  in  the  reform  of  our  Parliamentary 
system  still  incomplete,  no  man  could  more  honestly 
than  I  regard  his  fall  as  a  national  calamity.  We  are 
not  acting,  I  say,  with  any  desire  whatever  to  em- 
barrass the  Government.  We  are  seeking  only  to 
remind  them  of  their  principles.  People  do  not 
always  like  to  be  reminded  of  their  principles ;  but  it 
is  good  for  them — it  is  always  good  for  them — and 
they  very  soon  find  out  that  those  who  do  so  are  their 
best  friends. 

Now,  what  are  the  principles  of  the  Anti-Aggression 
League  ?  Well,  they  are  the  principles  of  the  Mid- 
Lothian  campaign,  of  the  Government  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone :  the  principles  that  the  nation  ratified  in  May 
1880.  That  is  to  say,  that  this  policy  of  extending 
the  Empire,  aggrandising  the  power  of  Britain, 
thrusting  ourselves  as  managers  and  masters  of  our 
weaker  neighbours,  backing  up  our  adventurous  people 
in  every  enterprise,  just  or  unjust,  bullying  the  weak 
tribes,  making  petty  kings  our  vassals,  opening 
markets  by  gunboats,  and  maintaining  controllers  by 
ironclads — this  system  must  cease,  once  for  all.  The 
Empire  is  a  great  deal  too  big  and  scattered  and  com- 
posite in  itself  to  need  any  increase.  He  is  the  worst 
enemy  of  our  country  who  seeks  to  make  it  wider  and 
more  difficult  to  defend.  We  have  already  more 
nations  to  manage  and  govern  than  we  can  succeed  in 
governing  well,  and  some  very  much  nearer  home  than 
Africa.  The  adventures  of  our  traders,  whether  in 
China  or  Japan,  or  South  Africa  or  North  Africa,  or 
Australia,  or  the  Pacific  Islands,  are  often  of  a  kind 
that  cover  us  with  shame  as  a  nation,  and  add  nothing 
but  sorrow  and  trouble  to  our  Governments. 

England,  in    spite  of  all  our    professions,   is  that 


igo  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

country  which,  of  all  others,  has  the  oftenest  war  on 
its  hands,  and  is  the  oftenest  engaged  in  crushing  the 
efforts  of  some  weaker  people  for  independence.  The 
German  E  mpi  re,  under  B  ismarck,  is  a  model  of  a  peaceable 
nation  compared  to  England  ;  Russia  herself  has  not  so 
many  wars,  and  all  the  military  monarchies  of  the  world 
put  together  are  not  so  frequently  engaged  in  fighting 
as  our  little  island,  shut  off  from  the  warlike  people  of 
Europe  by  the  "  silver  streak."  In  fifty  years  we  have 
been  engaged  in  at  least  fifty  wars,  and  a  year  hardly 
ever  passes  without  military  operations  of  some  kind 
by  sea  or  land.  In  theory  every  British  Government 
is  a  firm  friend  of  peace,  and  every  party  repudiates 
the  idea  of  aggression.  But,  one  after  another,  every 
Government  finds  war  too  tempting  to  be  resisted. 

For  these  reasons  the  Anti-Aggression  League  has 
requested  me  to  address  a  meeting  of  men  who  were 
chosen  to  represent  the  working  classes  and  the  mass 
of  the  industrious  community,  and  they  have  invited 
you  to  consider  the  appeal  that  I  make  to  you  for 
support  and  co-operation.  This  great  issue  of  our  age 
— the  replacing  of  the  old  international  policy  of  war, 
aggression,  and  rivalry  by  the  new  international  policy 
that  has  yet  to  be  of  peace,  forbearance,  and  mutual 
confidence  —  especially  concerns  the  great  labouring 
class  of  the  community,  and  its  best  hopes  lie  in  their 
help.  You,  if  I  may  address  myself  directly  to  those 
here  to-night,  who  represent  the  great  political  and 
social  organisations  of  the  workmen,  their  Trades 
Unions,  their  Co-operative  Societies,  their  political 
clubs,  and  their  educational  institutes,  you,  I  say,  have 
nothing  to  gain  and  everything  to  lose  by  this  policy 
of  national  aggrandisement. 

Your  first  interest  is  peace,  for  the  horrors  of  war 
fall  first  and  heaviest  on  you.  You  are  the  bulk  of  the 
people,  who  suffer  most  and  first  in  times  of  national 


THE  ANTI-AGGRESSION  LEAGUE    191 

distress.  You  are  not  dazzled  by  the  prizes  and 
honours  of  an  adventurous  campaign.  These  new 
markets  which  our  great  merchants  are  ever  seeking 
to  "open  up"  only  derange  the  labour  market  at 
home,  bringing  violent  gambling  in  the  employment 
of  capital,  to  be  followed  by  gluts,  reaction,  and  slack 
trade  upon  an  over  -  stocked  market  and  an  over- 
stimulated  labour  population.  This  civilisation  which 
our  official  and  our  capitalist  classes  are  ever  eager  to 
discharge  wholesale  upon  some  foreign  people  who 
seem  very  much  to  object  to  it ;  this  civilisation  which 
they  seem  to  think  can  be  shot  like  the  cargo  in  a 
ship,  and  not  seldom  like  the  charge  in  a  cannon  ; 
this  "civilisation"  is  no  interest  of  yours  and  no  work 
of  yours. 

You  have  nothing  to  gain  by  sacrificing  your  blood 
and  savings  in  order  that  more  traders  may  carry  gun- 
powder and  brandy  and  loaded  calicoes  farther  and 
farther  into  the  wilds  of  Africa  ;  in  order  that  the 
Czar  may  find  himself  checkmated  in  Central  Asia  ; 
in  order  that  the  city  of  Alexander  may  be  turned  into 
a  French  or  Italian  town,  and  that  the  salaries  of 
thousands  of  Europeans  may  be  paid  out  of  the  taxes 
of  Egypt.  This  continual  stimulus  to  the  aggressive 
instincts  of  the  nation  is  a  continual  stimulus  to  the 
power  of  the  military  classes,  and  to  all  the  retrograde 
elements  in  our  political  life.  They  strengthen  the 
power  and  the  opportunities  of  those  who  maintain 
the  older  class  prejudices  of  our  people,  and  they  retard 
the  growth  of  industrial  habits  and  aims.  The  policy 
of  the  people  is  bound  to  be  a  peace  policy  in  the  long 
run  j  for  it  is  only  by  peace  that  the  condition  of  the 
people  can  possibly  be  raised,  and  it  is  only  by  a 
settled  habit  of  peace  thaf  we  can  learn  the  habit  of 
social  justice,  and  the  true  solution  of  all  our  social 
problems. 


192   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

War,  the  rumour  of  war — the  very  breath  of  war — 
postpones  indefinitely  the  work  of  reforming  our  home 
abuses,  our  class  anomalies,  our  ancient  misgovern- 
ment.  It  postpones  the  remedies,  and  it  gives  a  new 
authority  to  the  classes  who  are  mainly  responsible  for 
the  diseases.  Tell  those  who  are  so  fond  of  touring 
round  the  globe  to  import — (I  would  rather  say  to 
inflict) — their  civilisation  on  the  backward  nations  and 
tribes,  tell  them  that  you  want  civilisation  here  at 
home,  if  you  can  get  it  genuine.  Tell  those  who  are 
so  eager  to  govern  Arabs,  and  Africans,  and  Afghans, 
and  Chinese  at  modest  stipends  of  ^4000  or  ^5000  a 
year — ask  them  to  see  what  can  be  done  in  the  better 
government  of  our  own  island. 

Before  they  settle  the 'Eastern  question,  and  the 
Central  Asian  mystery,  and  the  great  Euphrates 
Valley  imbroglio,  ask  them  to  settle  the  land  question 
in  Ireland  first,  and  then  in  Scotland  and  in  England. 
Ask  them  to  give  the  4,000,000  of  hard-worked  people 
of  London  the  chance  of  drinking  pure  water ;  ask 
them  to  give  the  people  of  London  some  means  of 
controlling  their  own  affairs,  and  of  providing  for  their 
own  wants ;  ask  them  to  give  a  rational  system  of 
local  government  to  the  English  and  the  Scotch  and 
the  Irish  counties  ;  ask  them  to  do  something  to  get 
our  vast  fabric  of  law  out  of  the  chaos  of  obscurity  and 
confusion  in  which  it  is  involved.  Tell  them  that 
there  are  fifty  burning  social  questions  at  home  to 
solve,  and  wants  of  the  English  people  to  supply  before 
they  undertake  to  civilise  the  human  race,  and  cause 
order  and  prosperity  to  reign  in  every  corner  of  the 
old  hemisphere,  in  every  island  at  least  of  the  new 
hemisphere.  Tell  those  noisy  philanthropists  who  call 
heaven  and  earth  to  witness  gf  the  "anarchy  "  on  the 
Nile,  the  "anarchy" on  the  Balkans, and  the  murderous 
propensities  of  the  Pacific  islanders — tell  them  to  go 


THE  ANTI-AGGRESSION  LEAGUE    193 

and  do  something  to  prevent  anarchy  in  Ireland. 
Whilst  "civilisation"  is  making  the  tour  of  the  world 
on  board  ironclads  with  eighty-ton  guns,  civilisation 
is  terribly  wanted  in  the  three  kingdoms  at  home. 
These  "  crises  "  and  "  demonstrations  "  suspend  your 
interests  and  silence  your  claims.  The  old  Roman 
said,  "  In  the  midst  of  arms  the  laws  are  silent." 
Silent  is  law  in  every  sense,  and  the  reforming  of  law, 
and  the  making  of  good  laws  most  silent  of  all. 

Our  Prime  Minister,  not  many  years  ago,  set  down 
some  twenty-seven  questions  which  he  said  were  of 
vital  and  immediate  moment  to  the  people,  and 
urgently  awaited  the  attention  of  Parliament.  Is  one 
of  the  twenty-seven  ever  heard  of  in  the  midst  of  a 
"  crisis,"  on  the  eve  or  even  in  the  moment  of  a  war, 
when  the  whole  attention  of  Parliament  and  the 
Ministry  is  strained  after  some  fierce  international 
struggle  ?  The  hope  of  land  reform,  of  law  reform, 
of  municipal  reform,  of  county  reform,  even  of  the 
supply  of  wholesome  water,  is  adjourned  Session  after 
Session.  Ireland — and  Ireland  is  only  a  case  of  old 
international  oppression — thrusts  out  everything,  and 
now  the  condition  of  Egypt  is  even  more  urgent  than 
that  of  Ireland ;  and  if  this  terrible  imbroglio  on  the 
Nile  were  to  land  us  in  a  European  war,  it  would  be 
years  and  years  before  we  ever  heard  again  of  any  one 
of  Mr.  Gladstone's  twenty-seven  burning  questions. 
Therefore  it  is,  I  say,  that  peace,  international  justice, 
and  quiet  relations  with  all  our  neighbours,  are  the 
first  of  all  the  interests  of  the  workmen.  They  alone 
of  the  community  can  make  their  voice  heard  without 
any  prejudice  ;  they  lose  most  heavily  by  war,  both  in 
what  they  immediately  suffer  and  in  what  they  have 
to  surrender.  They  may  leave  their  bones  to  wither 
on  distant  lands,  but  they  bring  back  no  fortunes,  no 
honours,  no  new  markets  for  their  capital,  no  new 


i94   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

posts  for  their  class.  They  only  can  speak  out  boldly 
and  with  the  irresistible  voice  of  conscience,  because 
they  only  have  no  interest  in  injustice,  nothing  to 
gain  by  conquest,  and  everything  to  lose  by  inter- 
ference. 


VIII 

EGYPT 

(1882) 

/  then  applied  these  principles  to  the  Egyptian  imbroglio. 

Now  I  ask  you  to  apply  these  principles  to  the  present 
crisis  in  Egypt.  In  what  I  have  hitherto  said,  I  have 
been  expressing  the  views  of  the  League  in  whose 
name  I  have  spoken  to-night.  But  in  all  that  I  may 
say,  on  the  immediate  cause  of  this  crisis,  and  on  the 
practical  policy  to  pursue,  I  would  rather  be  taken  to 
express  my  own  personal  opinion,  and  not  the  view  of 
any  group  whatever.  What  the  League  thinks  on 
the  crisis  may  be  seen  in  their  published  statement. 
I  should  like  to  add  something  to  that  statement  on 
my  own  responsibility. 

What  has  led  to  the  existing  stage  of  crisis  in 
Egypt  ?  For  a  long  time  past,  as  you  know,  the 
European  nations  have  been  running  a  race  together 
as  to  which  should  be  foremost  in  pressing  upon  Egypt 
its  civilisation  and  its  protection.  Their  civilisation 
took  the  form  at  first  of  enormous  loans  of  money  at 
high  interest,  which  the  civilisers  advanced  to  the 
rulers  of  Egypt  in  the  philanthropic  spirit  in  which 
Mr.  Ralph  Nickleby  advanced  cash  to  his  pupils. 
These  bounties  of  "  civilisation "  amount  altogether 
to  some  ^115,000,000.  Then  the  civilisers,  when 


196   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

they  found  the  country  utterly  sinking  under  this 
gigantic  burden  of  debt,  and  racked  by  the  most 
odious  misgovernment,  were  good  enough  to  invite 
themselves  to  fulfil  various  offices  at  large  salaries  to 
keep  things  a  little  straight.  By  a  Parliamentary 
paper  just  published,  we  learn  the  names,  and  offices, 
and  salaries  of  this  vast  army  of  European  officials 
paid  out  of  the  taxes  of  the  people  of  Egypt.  Their 
total  number  is  1325  ;  their  total  salaries  amount  to 
j£S73?7°4>  about  one-twelfth  part  of  the  entire  avail- 
able expenditure  of  the  country.  The  number  of 
the  European  civilisers  is  some  60,000  or  (some  say) 
100,000.  In  consideration  of  their  beneficent  mission, 
these  European  missionaries  of  good  works  at  10  per 
cent  have  been  exempt  from  local  taxation.  A  native 
pays  a  tax  of  12  per  cent  annual  value  on  his  house  ; 
the  European  lives  tax  free.  The  native  fly-driver 
pays  a  heavy  tax  on  his  carriage ;  the  European 
banker  drives  his  pair  tax  free.  Next,  the  civilisers 
having  obliged  the  country  with  some  115  millions 
sterling  at  7  and  10  per  cent,  obtained  "concessions" 
for  about  thirty-five  millions  more.  Then  they  kindly 
exempted  themselves  from  taxation,  were  good  enough 
to  set  up  local  courts  in  which  they  had  the  right  to 
bring  their  civil  and  criminal  affairs  to  a  judge  of 
their  own  nation.  An  army  of  European  judges,  and 
secretaries,  and  assessors,  and  barristers  were  called  in 
at  very  liberal  salaries,  who  kindly  undertook  to  do  the 
law  for  the  Egyptian  people. 

The  civilisers,  of  course,  could  not  flood  the 
country  with  their  gold,  make  themselves  free  of 
local  taxation,  free  of  local  jurisdiction,  without 
coming  into  political  conflicts  with  the  Egyptian 
Government  and  people,  as  well  as  with  one  another. 
One  Khedive  or  ruler  of  Egypt  was  dethroned  by  the 
pressure  put  by  the  European  Powers  on  the  Sultan 


EGYPT  197 

of  Turkey ;  another  was  put  in  his  place  who  well 
understood  that  he  would  be  protected  only  so  long 
as  he  did  what  he  was  told.  And  to  maintain  this 
system  the  notable  device  of  the  Control  was  set  up. 
England  and  France  have  the  right  to  send  out  each 
a  Controller  or  official  who  shall  supervise  the  entire 
expenditure  of  the  country,  provide  for  due  payment 
of  the  foreign  debt,  and  regulate  and  control  the 
Budget.  The  Controllers  are  the  two  foreign  Chan- 
cellors of  the  Exchequer,  as  it  were,  to  the  Egyptians. 
The  whole  financial  system  of  the  country  is  under 
their  supervision.  They  are  practically  in  the  position 
of  the  House  of  Commons  here,  having  ultimate 
control  of  the  purse.  Technically,  I  know  they  have 
no  veto  ;  but  as  every  item  of  the  Budget  passes  in 
review  before  them,  and  as  they  can  object  to  any 
item  they  please,  the  Controllers  are  really  the  irre- 
sponsible rulers  of  Egypt.  Each  Controller  receives 
a  salary  of  nearly  ^4000  a  year,  and  the  entire  cost  of 
this  one  institution  is  ^14,000  a  year. 

There  are  two  other  Controls,  so  that  the  Egyptian 
people  pay  about  ^30,000  a  year  for  the  luxury  of 
not  being  allowed  to  raise  or  to  expend  their  own 
taxes  as  they  please,  for  fear  that  their  foreign  creditors 
may  not  get  the  whole  of  their  four  and  a  half  millions 
of  interest.  The  population  of  Egypt  is  much  less 
than  ten  millions  j  and  the  revenue  of  this  very  poor 
people  is  nine  or  ten  millions,  or  some  £1  per  head. 
The  taxation  of  the  people  of  India  (and  we  are  often 
told  that  it  is  as  high  as  it  can  possibly  be  raised)  is 
about  48.  per  head — that  of  the  Egyptian  fellah  about 
five  times  as  much.  Of  this  nine  millions  about  one- 
half  is  carried  straight  out  of  the  country  to  pay  the 
foreign  usurer,  and  only  one-half  of  the  total  revenue 
is  available  for  the  administration  of  the  country  itself. 
Imagine  your  own  feelings,  if  you  had  to  send  every 


198  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

year  some  forty  millions  sterling  out  of  the  taxes  of 
the  country  to  pay  Turkish,  or  Arab,  or  Chinese 
bondholders  j  and  then,  having  paid  that  regularly, 
that  you  had  to  keep  a  Turkish  pasha  and  a  Chinese 
mandarin  in  London  to  control  your  expenditure,  so 
that  every  penny  of  the  Budget  had  to  get  the  sanction 
of  their  excellencies,  and  if  Mr.  Gladstone  or  any  other 
Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  wished  to  put  on  or  take 
off  a  tax,  down  would  come  a  fleet  of  ironclads  from 
the  Bosphorus  into  the  Thames,  and  train  their  8o-ton 
guns  right  in  view  of  the  Tower  and  Somerset  House. 
That  is  the  state  of  Egypt  now. 

Egypt  is  a  very  poor  and  a  shamefully  ill-governed 
country.  The  fellah  or  peasant  of  the  Nile  is  one  of 
the  poorest,  the  most  patient,  ill-used,  the  most  hope- 
less of  all  the  cultivators  of  the  soil  to  be  found  on  this 
wide  earth — outside  of  Ireland.  For  centuries  he  has 
been  the  prey  of  oppressors  and  tax-gatherers.  But 
the  worst  exactions  of  his  native  Mahometan  tax- 
gatherers  never  imposed  on  him  so  hopeless  a  burden 
as  the  cool,  scientific,  book-keeping  sort  of  spoliation 
of  his  European  civilisers.1 

All  this,  be  it  remembered,  is  duly  settled  by  high 
and  mighty  treaties.  You  hear  much,  you  will  hear 
more,  of  these  international  engagements,  of  firmans, 
and  treaties,  and  obligations,  and  decrees,  and  what 
not.  It  is  all  as  tight  and  technical  as  international 
lawyers  can  make  it,  just  as  tight  and  legal  as  Mr. 
Nickleby's  bill  transactions  with  young  heirs.  The 
Sultan  has  been  bullied,  and  coaxed,  and  influenced. 
The  Khedive  has  been  coaxed  and  warned.  There 
are  bipartite  treaties,  and  quadruple  treaties,  and  all 
sorts  of  grand  European  proceedings.  But  the  long 

1  I  quite  admit  that  from  the  purely  material  point  of  view  much  of 
this  has  been  remedied  and  the  condition  of  the  fellah  has  been  immensely 
improved — but  with  corresponding  evils  (1908). 


EGYPT  199 

and  the  short  of  it  is  this  :  Europeans  having  encour- 
aged a  profligate  and  unscrupulous  Turkish  Pasha, 
the  late  Khedive,  in  a  career  of  incredible  extravagance 
and  folly,  have  forced  another  profligate  and  unscrupu- 
lous Turk — the  late  Sultan  of  Constantinople — to 
fling  over  the  first  old  scoundrel,  to  bind  over  the 
country  to  all  eternity  to  pay  his  scandalous  debts,  to 
set  up  a  nominee  and  agent  of  the  creditors  as  a  new 
ruler  of  the  country,  and  have  taken  the  practical 
government  of  the  country  into  their  own  hands  in 
order  to  make  sure  that  the  interest  of  these  loans 
shall  be  regularly  paid.  The  same  thing  has  happened 
in  Egypt  which  happens  in  real  life.  The  spendthrift 
heir  to  a  property  goes  to  the  Jews  to  supply  his 
extravagance  and  follies.  They  fool  him  to  the  top 
of  his  bent,  and  lend  him  any  sum  he  likes  at  any 
usurious  rate  they  can  compel  him  to  accept.  The 
crash  conies,  and  then  they  come  into  possession  ; 
they  get  a  receiver  of  his  property  ;  and  they  squeeze 
his  tenants  to  get  their  interest. 

Well,  the  bondholders  are  now  in  possession  of 
Egypt ;  or  rather,  they  were  the  other  day,  till  they 
beat  a  hasty  retreat.  That  is  the  real  meaning  of  this 
Egyptian  mystery.  We  hear  a  great  deal  about  inter- 
national duties,  about  the  Canal,  and  the  interest  of 
England  in  her  Indian  Empire  !  All  that  is  idle  talk, 
that  is  wide  of  the  true  facts.  It  is  quite  true  that 
the  Canal  is  a  matter  of  great  importance  to  English 
commerce.  But  no  one  has  threatened  it.  The 
Canal  is  more  than  100  miles  from  Alexandria, 
separated  by  50  miles  of  impassable  and  uninhabited 
desert  from  the  cultivable  soil  of  Egypt.  But  does  it 
follow  that,  because  we  have  an  interest  to  sail  our 
ships  freely  through  the  Canal,  the  ruler  of  Egypt 
is  to  be  our  mere  puppet — that  we  are  to  undertake 
the  moral  and  material  control  of  a  population  of  five 


200    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

millions  in  a  country  as  vast  as  France,  that  we  are  to 
establish  in  the  country  a  huge  national  debt,  a  huge 
army  of  foreign  officials  of  our  own  ;  that  we  are  to 
control  the  Budget,  and  meddle  with  their  politics, 
make  Ministries,  and  dynasties,  and  unmake  them 
when  we  don't  feel  quite  satisfied  that  they  are 
looking  after  our  money  ?  And  all  this,  forsooth, 
in  order  that  our  ships  may  sail  through  a  canal 
100  miles  off! 

Naturally  this  "  spoiling  "  of  the  Egyptians,  which 
they  now  call  "exploitation,"  this  control  and  dry- 
nursing,  roused  native  hostility.  Strange  to  say,  the 
Egyptians  grew  sulky  at  so  much  civilisation.  The 
1300  civilisers,  paid  £3  73,000  per  annum  out  of  their 
taxes,  seemed  a  little  overdone  ;  the  60,000  Europeans 
living  tax  free  ;  the  local  courts  of  alien  law  and 
foreign  judges  ;  the  4^  millions  (half  the  total  revenue) 
carried  off  to  foreign  bondholders.  The  Mahometan 
population  conceived  what  is  called  a  "fanatical" 
objection  to  the  foreigners ;  they  even  blasphemed 
the  value  of  the  civilisation  ;  they  murmured  it  was 
rather  too  dear,  and  they  talked  about  a  Parliament. 
For  some  time  the  head  of  this  movement  was  in  the 
native  army,headed  by  a  native  gentleman,  Arabi  Pasha. 
A  Parliament  was  called,  and  soon  began  a  struggle 
between  the  Parliament,  the  Army,  the  University, 
and  the  native  leaders  on  the  one  side,  and  the  Khedive, 
some  of  his  official  world  and  the  European  ring  of 
civilisers  on  the  other.  The  ring,  and  when  I  say 
the  ring  I  mean  the  1300  European  salaried  officers  of 
the  Egyptian  Government  and  their  belongings,  the 
agents  of  the  banks,  and  railways,  gas  works,  and  other 
concessions  of  35  millions,  and  the  European  popula- 
tion which  had  planted  itself  in  Egypt — the  ring,  I 
say,  chose  to  treat  the  native  movement  as  a  military 
rebellion. 


EGYPT  201 

For  months  the  Press,  the  Foreign  Offices  and 
political  world  of  Europe  have  been  deluged  with 
outcries  that  it  was  all  the  work  of  mutinous  soldiers. 
It  suited  the  ring  to  call  a  national  movement,  pro- 
voked by  their  meddling,  a  mutiny.  Unhappily  our 
public  representatives  took  side  against  the  leaders  j 
they  misled  our  Foreign  Office  ;  they  openly  avowed 
their  hostility  to  the  native  party.  The  English 
representatives  refused  to  recognise  its  chief,  and 
plotted  his  downfall ;  and  to  fall  in  the  East  is  usually 
to  be  killed  or  exiled.  It  is  as  if,  in  the  struggle  in 
France  in  1877  between  Gambetta  and  the  Republican 
party  and  Marshal  MacMahon  and  his  Ministry,  Lord 
Lyons  and  the  English  Embassy  had  entered  into  the 
struggle,  and  had  eagerly  stimulated  the  Marshal  to 
crush  the  Republic.  The  pretext  that  the  movement 
was  a  military  mutiny  is  a  wild  and  silly  calumny. 
Events  have  proved  it ;  the  strength  of  the  movement 
is  not  military,  but  civil.  It  lies  in  the  great  university 
or  school  of  Cairo,  the  intellectual  centre  of  the  Mussul- 
man world,  with  nearly  20,000  members.  It  lies  in 
the  intelligent  people  of  the  city  and  the  headmen  of 
the  villages.  Events  have  proved,  I  say,  how  idle  is 
this  cry  of  a  military  mutiny.  If  it  were  so,  why  has 
the  national  Parliament  placed  itself  in  the  front ; 
why  is  it  that  we  are  told  that  Europeans  are  hardly 
safe  in  a  village,  whilst  the  whole  army  is  now  at 
Alexandria  ?  Egypt  is  not  the  first  nor  the  only 
place  where  a  national  rising  against  a  corrupt 
monarchy  has  been  headed  and  represented  by  soldiers. 

We  know  something  ourselves  about  political 
colonels  who  stood  up  by  the  cause  of  the  people. 
But  military  mutiny  or  not,  the  cause  of  Arabi 
succeeded,  in  spite  of  the  hostility,  the  intrigues, 
and  the  threats  of  the  European  Consuls  and  the 
European  Controllers.  The  Khedive  did  not  take 


202  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  advice  of  the  English  Controller  and  did  not  arrest 
Arabi ;  but  Arabi's  affection  for  the  Control  was,  of 
course,  not  increased  by  the  advice.  He  became, 
however,  the  leading  Minister  of  the  Khedive,  and 
proceeded  to  carry  out  a  number  of  changes  in  the 
Egyptian  army  and  the  Egyptian  finances.  Now,  I 
am  not  concerned  to  argue  that  Arabi's  measures 
were  wise  or  good.  Perhaps  he  is  not  as  admirable 
a  War  Minister  as  Mr.  Childers,  or  as  consummate 
a  financier  as  Mr.  Gladstone.  But  he  was,  for  the 
time  being,  the  lawful  Minister  of  Egypt,  and  he  was 
dealing  with  the  details  of  Egyptian  administration. 
Now  the  one  thing  that  the  British  officials  in  Egypt 
will  not  tolerate  is  that  Egyptians  should  deal  with 
the  details  of  Egyptian  administration  in  any  way  but 
what  the  officials  like.  Our  Controller  in  Egypt  is 
an  Indian  official.  He  is  paid  nearly  ^4000  a  year 
out  of  the  Egyptian  taxes  to  prevent  the  Egyptians 
from  spending  their  revenue  as  they  like.  The  English 
Controller,  I  say,  seems  to  look  upon  himself  as  the 
resident  at  an  Indian  Rajah's  Court  —  his  practical 
tutor  and  master. 

There  are  three  of  these  separate  controls  in 
Egypt,  and  the  principal  Controller  seems  to  assume 
the  position  of  superintending  Providence.  To  such 
lengths  does  this  meddling  go,  that  you  will  find  in 
the  Blue-books  a  high  international  question  made  of 
some  articles  in  the  native  papers.  The  English 
Envoy  demands  and  obtains  the  suppression  of  two 
native  journals  for  two  articles  set  out  in  the  Blue- 
book,  which  simply  (and  I  think  very  reasonably)  ex- 
press the  irritation  of  the  native  mind  at  the  European 
exploitation  of  their  country.  From  November  last 
the  story  is  the  same — the  Consuls  and  Controllers 
interfering  in  every  detail  of  government,  thwarting 
the  formation  of  the  national  party,  openly  instigating 


EGYPT  203 

the  Khedive  to  crush  Arabi,  intriguing  with  his 
political  rivals,  and  seeking  to  destroy  the  influence 
of  the  Chamber.  The  part  taken  by  the  British 
authorities  in  Egypt  was  the  part  taken  in  France 
in  1877,  by  the  reactionary  Monarchic  and  Imperialist 
parties,  to  crush  Gambetta  and  the  Republic,  with  this 
difference,  that  in  Egypt  it  was  the  act  of  a  foreign 
and  avowedly  friendly  Government.  At  last  the 
British  Government  took  that  fatal  step  of  sending 
a  powerful  fleet  to  Alexandria,  and  under  its  guns 
demanding  by  an  ultimatum  the  dismissal  of  Arabi, 
his  exile,  the  break-up  of  his  party,  and  the  reconsti- 
tution  of  the  old  system  of  nursing. 

Lord  Granville  was  warned  on  many  sides  that 
this  would  certainly  produce  a  dangerous  excitement  j 
you  will  find  in  Blue-book  No.  7  that  Lord  Granville 
was  informed,  and  repeated  to  France,  "that  the 
political  advantages  of  the  demonstration  by  the  fleet 
outweighed  the  danger  it  would  cause  to  the  Euro- 
peans in  Egypt."  The  fleet,  as  we  know,  utterly 
failed  to  effect  the  object  sought.  The  Egyptians 
were  not  cowed  by  it ;  they  were  roused  to  fury  by 
it.  I  honour  the  Egyptian  people  that  they  were 
capable  of  such  manly  indignation.  Where  should 
we  be  if  the  Czar  and  the  French  Republic  sent  a 
fleet  into  the  Thames,  and  in  front  of  the  Tower 
served  an  ultimatum  on  the  Queen,  to  send  Mr. 
Gladstone  to  Australia,  to  dismiss  the  House  of 
Commons,  and  to  restore  Lord  Salisbury,  with  a 
French  and  Russian  dry-nurse  to  control  him  ! 
Well,  the  Egyptians  have  feelings,  and  they  resented, 
as  was  natural,  this  insolent  and  impotent  menace. 
What  followed  ?  The  Government — the  Govern- 
ment of  Mr.  Gladstone — actually  went  to  the  Sultan 
of  Turkey  and  implored  him  to  send  an  official  armed 
with  his  Imperial  authority  to  crush  the  national 


204   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

party  and  restore  the  dry-nurse  system.  In  the 
history  of  national  humiliation  I  know  nothing  so 
tragic  as  that  the  Government  of  Mr.  Gladstone 
should  go  on  its  knees  to  the  despot  at  Constantinople 
and  crush  out  the  rising  hopes  of  a  people  struggling 
into  some  kind  of  independence  and  life.  The 
Government  well  knew  what  crushing  Arabi  meant. 
To  crush  a  national  leader  in  the  Sultan's  dominions 
is  to  kill  him.  A  man  was  chosen,  well  known  to  be 
one  of  the  most  unscrupulous  ruffians  of  the  Pashas, 
and  words  can  hardly  exceed  that !  They  were  warned 
that  the  Pasha  sent  out  was  at  once  treacherous,  reck- 
less, and  merciless.  The  Government  wanted  Arabi 
to  be  made  away  with  !  Well,  he  was  too  much  for 
them — too  much  for  Dervish,  and  the  Sultan,  and  the 
Khedive,  and  the  British  and  French  fleets. 

We  all  know  what  followed.  The  Egyptian  army 
and  people  were  stung  to  frenzy  by  this  attempt  on 
the  part  of  their  foreign  creditors,  first  to  crush  a 
legitimate  national  movement  towards  representative 
government,  by  cannon,  and  then  the  attempt  to 
crush  it  by  the  force  of  Sultan  and  Pasha.  A 
horrible,  savage,  and  most  abominable  massacre  re- 
sulted. I  am  not  about  to  defend  or  to  palliate  any 
massacre ;  and  this  one  was  cruel  and  brutal  enough. 
But  let  us  remember  that  the  Italian  nation,  with  its 
political  and  intellectual  leaders,  with  Garibaldi  at 
their  head,  have  just  been  celebrating,  six  hundred 
years  after  the  event,  the  great  massacre  of  the  French 
in  Sicily,  known  as  the  Sicilian  Vespers.  That  is 
now  held  in  Italy  to  be  a  glorious  event.  Well,  I  do 
not  think  so.  But  I  say  that  the  massacre  in  Alex- 
andria on  the  nth  inst.  was  not  unlike  the  massacre 
of  the  Sicilian  Vespers,  except  only  that  it  was  not 
one-hundredth  part  so  bloody,  and  that  it  had  the 
additional  excuse  of  religious  fanaticism.  I  deplore 


EGYPT  205 

the  innocent  blood  that  was  then  shed  ;  but  I  say 
that  the  British  Government  did  everything  that  men 
could  do  to  make  a  massacre  probable  ;  they  were 
warned  that  a  massacre  was  more  than  probable  ;  and 
they  urged  the  French  Government  to  go  on,  as  the 
political  advantages  to  be  gained  outweighed  the  risk 
of  massacre. 

And  now  what  are  we  going  to  do  ?  30,000  or 
40,000  Europeans  have  left  the  country.  Perhaps 
nearly  as  many  remain.  The  Control  has  broken 
down,  the  dry-nursing  system  has  come  to  an  end. 
There  let  it  stay.  Let  the  Europeans  who  have  left 
Egypt  stay  away.  If  they  have  made  themselves 
intolerable  to  the  Egyptian  people,  let  them  take  the 
consequences.  If  they  have  sunk  their  money  in 
Egypt,  that  is  their  affair ;  if  they  have  gambled  in 
Egyptian  bonds,  I  cannot  say  I  particularly  pity  them. 
But  the  system  of  taking  into  our  hands  the  entire 
administration  of  Egypt,  receiving  its  taxes,  paying 
ourselves  for  the  trouble  of  getting  our  money,  nursing 
the  native  government,  using  the  native  ruler  as  our 
mere  puppet,  treating  Egypt  in  fact  as  a  conquered 
country,  has  broken  down.  I  am  glad  it  has.  It  was 
a  curse  to  Egypt,  to  the  world,  and  to  England.1  Our 
Indian  officials,  civil  and  military,  and  all  whom  they 
influence,  and  all  our  military,  and  half  our  civil 
service,  have  come  to  think  that  anything  which  is 
convenient  for  India  is  right,  and  just,  and  necessary. 
Egypt  lies  on  the  road  to  India,  and  so  Egypt  must 
be  made  dependent,  nursed  if  need  be,  but  also 
annexed  and  conquered  if  need  be. 

I  am  coming  to  look  on  our  Indian  empire  as  one 
of  the  greatest  burdens  that  ever  befell  a  nation,  if 

1  The  occupation  and  administration  of  Egypt  has  been  renewed, 
under  better  conditions,  but  the  inherent  evils  of  the  system  are  as  evil 
as  ever — as  dangerous  as  ever  (1908). 


206    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

India  is  the  eternal  excuse  for  every  injustice,  every 
aggression,  and  any  crime.  These  Indian  habits  and 
ideas  have  corrupted  our  soldiers,  our  officials,  our 
Ministries,  our  Parliament.  Men  who  rule  240 
millions  think  another  10  millions  of  slaves  a  mere 
trifle.  They  get  to  look  on  all  Orientals  equally  as 
"niggers."  When  you  read  the  despatches  of  Sir 
A.  Colvin,  you  see  that  he  treats  the  Khedive  as  a 
dependent  Rajah,  and  Egypt  as  if  it  were  part  and 
parcel  of  the  Indian  empire.  Talk  to  these  Indian 
soldiers  and  you  hear  them  say  that  of  course  Egypt 
lies  so  much  in  the  way,  that  one  day  we  must  take  it 
ourselves.  Others  talk  about  a  Sepoy  army  from 
Bombay  and  a  little  of  the  rough-and-ready  justice 
of  Kabul.  Are  they  quite  sure  that  a  native  army  of 
Indians  can  be  trusted  to  fight  their  co-religionists  in 
Egypt  ? — that  Arabi  may  not  raise  the  flag  of  the 
Prophet  in  a  way  that  may  vibrate  through  Asia,  and 
rouse  all  the  dormant  enthusiasm  of  the  servants  of 
Islam  ?  Are  they  quite  sure  that  Europe  will  stand 
by  and  see  Sepoys  in  possession  of  the  Nile  and  of 
Alexandria,  and  will  suffer  English  generals  to  hang 
the  native  officers  and  leaders  as  easily  as  we  hung  the 
Afghan  officers  and  leaders  at  Kabul  ? 

And  all  this  wild  and  criminal  bluster  is  supposed 
to  be  justified  by  the  one  word — the  Canal.  Well, 
the  Canal  is  not  a  British  river  ;  it  is  an  ocean  high- 
way open  to  the  world.  The  covetous  rivalry  of 
European  Powers  to  possess  Egypt  existed  long  before 
the  Canal  was  thought  of,  and  will  continue,  even  if 
the  Canal  were  to  disappear.  When  Napoleon  and 
Pitt  fought  for  Egypt,  there  was  no  Canal,  and  Egypt 
was  not  even  the  road  to  India  !  When  Palmerston 
and  Thiers  fought  the  old  Egyptian  question  in 
Mehemet  Ali's  time,  there  was  no  Canal.  The  French, 
at  times,  have  been  just  as  eager  to  dominate  Egypt  as 


EGYPT  207 

we  are,  and  so  have  the  Italians  and  the  Russians,  and 
yet  neither  Power  has  any  especial  concern  with  the 
Canal.  The  Canal  is  a  miserable  excuse,  just  as  the 
Bosphorus  was,  or  Cyprus  was  and  is !  The  Egyptian 
people  live  miles  away  from  the  Canal ;  the  possession 
of  Egypt  is  in  no  way  necessary  to  the  free  use  of  the 
Canal ;  and  a  series  of  bloody  struggles  for  the  posses- 
sion of  Egypt  is  the  worst  and  most  costly  and  most 
criminal  way  to  secure  the  use  of  the  Canal.  How 
miserable  a  pretext  it  is  that  the  sole  object  is  to  secure 
the  Canal  is  shown  by  this  :  When  Mr.  Gladstone 
formally  defined  in  Parliament  the  objects  of  the  Con- 
ference, he  expressly  said  that  the  Canal  was  not  one 
of  them.  When  he  stated  the  ends  of  British  policy, 
he  said  nothing  about  the  Canal.  He  mentioned 
three  objects,  not  one  of  which  is  a  national  concern  of 
ours,  and  what  was  the  fourth  object  as  he  stated  then  ? 
He  then  stated  the  true  one — the  money  interest  of 
certain  bondholders  and  shareholders. 

It  is  a  miserable  fiction  to  tell  us  that  all  this 
elaborate  system  of  the  three  Controls,  the  inter- 
national tribunals,  and  the  various  rights  under  the 
firmans,  is  aimed  at  securing  the  passage  of  English 
ships  through  the  Canal.  It  is  a  system  for  plunder- 
ing the  Egyptians,  for  riveting  on  them  the  chains  of 
that  debt-slavery  which  is  regarded  as  their  permanent 
and  natural  condition.  The  Greek  philosopher  thought 
that  all  non-Greeks  were  naturally  slaves  ;  and  so  the 
British  financier  looks  on  the  Egyptians  as  naturally 
debt-slaves.  The  firmans  and  decrees  and  treaties 
which  have  been  wrung  from  the  weakness  and  the 
cupidity  of  Sultan  and  Khedive  are  an  elaborate  system 
for  handing  over  the  Egyptians  to  their  European 
creditors.  It  is  an  enormity  to  saddle  a  wretched 
body  of  peasants,  as  poor  as  any  Asiatics,  with  a 
nominal  debt  of  100  millions,  nearly  as  much  as  the 


2o8    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

whole  debt  of  India  with  its  240  millions,  more  than 
the  debt  of  Prussia  and  many  of  the  rich  and  powerful 
nations  of  Europe.  It  is  an  enormity  to  tax  the 
fellah  of  the  Nile  nearly  £  i  per  head,  the  taxation  of 
the  Russian  people,  five  times  that  of  the  Indian.  And 
a  still  greater  enormity  to  carry  off  to  Europe  half  of 
the  entire  revenue  of  the  country. 

This  is  organised  plunder  and  extortion.  No 
treaties,  or  firmans,  or  decrees  can  make  it  just  or 
reasonable  in  the  eyes  of  morality.  Is  it  conceivable 
that  this  country  can  be  about  to  proceed  to  the 
desperate  crime  of  attempting  by  war  to  restore  this 
apparatus  of  extortion  ?  What  is  it  to  the  people  and 
Government  of  this  country  that  a  dozen  banking  firms 
of  Paris  and  London,  and  their  clients,  should  lose 
some  of  that  money  which  they  recklessly  placed  at 
usury  ?  Why  is  it  that  the  blood  and  money  of  our 
people  are  to  be  poured  out  in  order  to  maintain  the 
speculators  who  have  farmed  the  taxes  of  the  fellah,  and 
the  officials  who  have  forced  themselves  on  the  ruler  of 
Egypt  ?  I  am  for  from  demanding  repudiation  of  the 
debt,  gigantic  as  it  is,  and  unscrupulous  as  it  is  for  us 
to  saddle  the  Egyptian  people  with  the  follies  of  a  few 
vicious  Turks.  I  do  not  ask  for  the  dismissal  of  the 
Europeans  whom  the  Egyptians  desire  to  retain  in 
their  service.  But  I  ask  that  this  nation  shall  leave 
the  usurers  and  the  Egyptian  people  to  settle  it.  I 
protest  against  the  iniquity  of  engaging  in  war,  jointly 
with  European  Powers,  or  making  the  Turk  our 
agent,  or  singly  ourselves.  I  protest  against  the  firing 
one  shot  or  the  spending  one  penny  to  restore  a 
system  which  has  broken  down,  to  replace  Europeans 
who  have  run  away,  and  to  set  on  its  legs  again  the 
legalised  plunder  of  Egypt. 

It  is  no  business  of  ours  to  assist  speculators 
in  getting  their  7  per  cent  by  using  the  fiction  of 


EGYPT  209 

European  law  to  an  Oriental  and  Mahometan  people. 
We  have,  as  a  nation,  no  concern  in  securing  the 
salaries  of  a  crowd  of  adventurous  Europeans  who 
have  forced  themselves  into  good  berths  at  Alexandria 
and  Cairo.  The  air  is  full  of  grand  reasons  of  State. 
We  hear  of  international  treaties,  the  rivalry  of  nations, 
and  the  paramount  British  interest  of  India.  Thrust 
these  solemn  impostures  aside  even  when  they  are 
repeated  with  a  grand  air  by  that  new  convert  to 
Jingoism,  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette.  Whatever  there 
may  be  in  these  things,  there  is  one  thing  para- 
mount over  all — that  it  is  an  infamy  to  use  the  armed 
might  of  England  to  do  the  dirty  work  of  rings  of 
financial  speculators  and  adventurous  place-hunters. 
It  would  be  an  indelible  shame  on  us  to  crush  back 
into  the  slavery  of  the  other  subjects  of  the  Sultan  a 
people  who  are  just  stirring  towards  national  life  and 
freedom.  I  cannot  believe  that  a  statesman  so  keen  as 
Lord  Granville  will  ever  commit  the  folly  of  reviving 
that  system  of  nursing  Egypt  of  which  he  has  himself 
pointed  out  all  the  evils.  And  I  will  not  think  that  a 
Government  of  which  Mr.  Gladstone  is  the  chief  can 
be  about  to  enter  on  a  European  war  (for  it  may  mean 
that)  to  crush  out  in  blood  and  tyranny  a  weak  but 
inoffensive  people  for  the  sake  of  an  organised  and  cruel 
system  of  unscrupulous  money-lending. 

Tell  them  that  their  own  eloquent  protests  against 
Turkish  misrule,  Russian  and  Austrian  misrule,  will 
fall  back  on  them  like  coals  of  fire  on  their  head.  It 
is  not  the  misrule  of  the  Turks,  it  is  Englishmen 
fighting  to  rivet  on  a  weak  people  the  chains  of  a  debt- 
slavery.  For  my  part,  I  will  not  believe  it.  It  would 
be  too  dark  a  close  for  the  political  life  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone. For  my  part,  I  am  ready  to  leave  Egypt  for 
the  Egyptians.  It  would  be  monstrous  that  this 
country  should  be  dragged  into  the  attempted  conquest 


210    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  a  difficult  country  as  large  as  France  or  Germany 
on  the  stale  and  tawdry  pretext  that  it  is  required  for 
our  prestige.  Let  us  all  appeal  from  the  Ministers  in 
office  in  1882  to  those  same  Ministers  in  opposition  in 
1880.  Let  us  make  it  impossible  ever  to  say  that  we 
were  thrust  into  a  wanton  and  unjust  shedding  of 
blood  solely  because  our  Foreign  Office  had  received 
a  merited  rebuff  and  our  navy  had  been  paraded  in  a 
foolish  and  futile  menace. 


AN  APPEAL  TO  MR.  GLADSTONE 
(July  i,  1882) 

The  foregoing  Address  had  hardly  been  published  and  widely 
circulated  when  I  issued  an  open  letter  to  Mr.  Glad- 
stone, which  reached  him  just  before  the  bombardment  of 
Alexandria,  the  prelude  to  the  iniquitous  conquest  of 
Egypt. 

I  reissue  it  after  twenty-six  years  have  passed,  because 
all  that  has  taken  place  since  justifies,  in  my  opinion,  the 
fears  I  then  expressed,  and  proves  the  soundness  of  the 
principles  I  then  maintained. 

In  spite  of  the  immense  improvement  in  the  material 
condition  of  Egypt  and  the  admirable  results  obtained  by 
the  eminent  statesmen  and  the  beneficent  institutions  that 
our  rule  has  established  on  the  whole  valley  of  the  Nile, 
the  inherent  evils  of  conquest  and  annexation  remain  and 
fester  in  that  land. 

I  repeat  these  protests  and  I  recall  these  principles  of 
international  morality  because  the  same  evil  courses  have 
been  constantly  followed  by  England  in  Burmah,  in 
Tibet,  in  China,  in  South  Africa,  as  well  as  by  Russia, 
Germany,  Italy,  and  most  conspicuously  are  still  being 
attempted  by  France  in  Morocco  (1908}. 


EGYPT  211 

SIR — I  venture  respectfully  to  address  you  in  a 
time  of  crisis,  when  the  reputation  of  your  whole  life 
is  at  stake — and  not  merely  your  reputation  as  a  states- 
man, but  as  a  man.  Every  principle  that  moved  you 
in  the  most  famous  effort  of  your  political  career, 
as  well  as  every  profession  that  made  you  the  most 
popular  Minister  of  this  century,  now  draws  you  to 
the  side  of  justice  and  peace.  You  are  being  drawn 
to  the  side  of  oppression  and  war  by  interests  and 
motives,  the  strength  of  which  I  make  no  attempt  to 
deny,  and  the  difficulty  of  resisting  which  is  extra- 
ordinarily great. 

Almost  every  sentence  that  you  uttered  in  the  most 
memorable  campaign  of  modern  politics  would  serve 
my  turn,  if  criticism  were  my  purpose.  But  I  have 
too  deep  a  sense  of  the  sincerity  of  those  noble  counsels 
you  gave  to  the  nation  but  two  years  ago,  to  charge 
you  lightly  with  inconsistency  ;  and  I  know  the  com- 
plications of  the  crisis  too  well  to  look  on  it  as  any 
plain  and  clear  matter.  The  crisis  in  Egypt  imposes 
on  English  statesmen  a  dilemma  as  painful  as  ever 
harassed  a  Minister ;  and  just  and  wise  men  of  the 
same  way  of  thinking,  we  know,  come  to  different 
conclusions  thereon.  I  shall  waste  no  time  in  quoting 
from  your  speeches,  nor  in  establishing  general  maxims. 
The  question  for  us  all  to-day  is  whether  the  peculiar 
circumstances  of  Egypt  justify  a  policy  which  you 
have  taught  our  people  to  repudiate  elsewhere.  Is 
Egypt  a  real  exception  to  the  principle,  that  British 
interests  shall  be  no  pretext  for  international  injustice  ? 

Here  a  compromise  with  principle  which  is  easy  to 
many  statesmen  is  not  possible  to  you.  The  passion 
with  which  you  exhorted  the  nation  to  throw  off  the 
evil  system  of  the  past  sprang  from  a  truly  religious 
impulse  in  your  own  heart,  a  loathing  for  wickedness, 
a  spiritual  sense  of  moral  rather  than  material  interests. 


2i2    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Having  lifted  up  your  voice  with  a  power  over  the 
people  that  has  never  been  equalled  by  any  English 
statesman,  and  with  a  religious  fervour  for  right  which 
is  hardly  ever  brought  into  politics,  you  cannot  in 
your  old  age  launch  the  nation  on  a  new  career  of 
international  crime  without  covering  your  life  with  a 
stain.  It  would  be  not  so  much  a  mistake  in  policy 
as  a  recantation  of  faith. 

All  then  turns  on  the  issue,  whether  the  special 
conditions  of  Egypt  make  that  policy  a  duty  there 
which  is  a  crime  elsewhere  ;  whether  the  theories  of 
Lord  Beaconsfield  were  wrong  rather  in  this,  that 
they  were  applied  on  the  Danube  instead  of  the  Nile. 
As  a  general  principle  all  is  plain  ;  as  a  matter  of  duty 
your  own  position  is  notorious.  Men  say,  and  some 
of  those  whom  you  most  trust,  that  this  particular  case 
is  a  peculiar  exception ;  that  the  real  condition  is  not 
the  apparent  one  ;  that  the  true  dangers  and  interests 
are  unknown  to  the  public ;  that  there  are  higher 
interests  even  than  right  and  good  faith ;  that  there  is 
a  subtlety  about  this  Egyptian  problem  which  is  lost 
on  the  vulgar  mind.  All  this  may  be  true  ;  but  the 
burden  of  proof  rests  on  those  who  assert  the  excep- 
tion ;  and  it  will  require  all  your  skill,  if  the  nation  is 
not  to  feel  its  conscience  wounded  and  its  self-respect 
lowered  by  a  sudden  change  of  front  in  the  hour  of 
temptation. 

There  is  about  all  attempts  to  justify  aggression  in 
Egypt  that  same  vagueness  and  uncertainty  of  ground, 
that  juggling  with  reasons,  and  that  appeal  to  contra- 
dictory motives  which  we  have  heard  so  often  in 
Turkey  or  Kabul,  the  Greek  islands  and  Cyprus.  It 
is  even  greater.  The  advocates  of  aggression  do  not 
rely  steadily  on  any  one  of  these.  India,  the  Empire, 
British  interests,  commerce,  our  countrymen  in  per- 
sonal danger,  English  capital  sunk  in  Africa,  the  large 


EGYPT 

financial  interests  at  stake,  our  international  obliga- 
tions, the  harmony  of  Europe,  the  cause  of  good 
government,  the  emancipation  of  the  slaves,  the 
amelioration  of  the  lot  of  the  fellah,  the  jealousies  and 
ambition  of  France,  with  a  general  background  of 
"civilisation,"  make  up  the  shifting  reasons  for  the 
one  solid  end,  which  is  —  military  operations  on 
Egyptian  soil.  It  is  the  old  story  j  the  same  grand 
phrases  which  so  often  did  duty  on  the  Danube  and 
the  Bosphorus,  on  the  Vaal  and  the  Indus.  You  tore 
them,  sir,  into  shreds  and  patches  in  Mid-Lothian.  Can 
these  rags  now  obscure  your  sight  ? 

Grapple  with  any  one  of  these  reasons,  and  the 
advocates  of  war  straightway  fall  back  on  another. 
If  we  deny  that  the  Indian  Empire  involves  the 
British  occupation  of  every  country  that  lies  in  the 
way,  they  refer  us  to  the  financial  interests  we  have  in 
Egypt.  If  we  deny  that  it  is  the  business  of  the 
State  to  collect  debts,  we  are  told  that  it  is  not  the 
interest  of  the  bondholders  so  much  as  the  danger 
of  French  conquest.  When  we  say  that  France  is 
clearly  opposed  to  war,  then  we  have  rehearsed  to  us 
the  story  of  British  capital  invested  in  business, 
civilisation,  and  the  poor  fellah.  These  things  are, 
some  of  them,  desirable  objects  enough,  but  separated 
by  a  gulf  from  any  connection  with  English  conquest ; 
or  they  are  private  matters  in  which  the  State  has  no 
concern  ;  or  they  are  mere  phrases  or  bugbears.  The 
people  who  affect  the  higher  politics  shake  their  heads, 
and  ask  if  we  have  heard  of  that  despatch.  There  is 
the  old  hollow  assumption  of  superior  information  and 
foresight.  "  Serious  "  politicians,  as  they  love  to  call 
themselves,  ask  us  volatile  persons  if  we  know  all  that 
there  is  behind  Tewfik,  Arabi,  and  Dervish,  and  what 
the  French  Consul  is  aiming  at,  and  what  the  In- 
telligence Department  has  just  heard.  They  shuffle 


u4  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

these  objects  and  motives  backwards  and  forwards,  and 
nimbly  avoid  a  real  probing  of  any  one.  You,  sir, 
have  shown  us  that  the  peace  and  good  name  of  a 
great  people  are  not  to  be  bemouthed  away  by  diplo- 
matic brag.  When  you  tore  up  all  this  artificial 
network  of  injustice,  you  made  it  impossible  for  the 
nation  to  have  it  woven  again  under  its  eyes. 

It  cannot  escape  you  that  these  counsels  of  crime 
are  not  brought  to  us  by  pure  hands.  It  is  not 
politicians  of  wisdom  and  experience  who  call  for  the 
establishment  of  British  power  in  Egypt.  It  is 
money-lenders  and  shareholders.  There  are  in  England 
and  in  France  groups  of  very  rich  men  with  enormous 
financial  interests  in  that  country.  Four  millions  and 
a  half  yearly  is  paid  to  them  on  loans  alone.  They 
have  further  invested  an  immense  sum — as  much,  we 
are  told,  as  thirty-five  millions — in  works,  business, 
and  adventures  on  Egyptian  soil.  There  are  1353 
Europeans  who  have  places  and  salaries  under  the 
Khedive.  The  Bourses  of  the  West  have  made  Cairo 
and  Alexandria  hunting-grounds  for  their  speculations. 
Their  class  owns  or  influences  half  the  Press  in 
Europe.  It  influences,  and  sometimes  makes,  half 
the  governments  of  Europe.  Here  is  the  true  source 
of  all  the  persistent  political  intrigues  of  which  for 
years  Egypt  has  been  the  field.  The  ultimate  end  of 
these  wealthy  persons  is  a  perfectly  legitimate  one  :  it 
is  the  increase  of  their  own  fortunes.  But  this  is  not 
an  end  which  concerns  the  State.  And  all  the  lofty 
reasons  of  State  which  they  inspire  in  the  Press,  and 
impose  upon  diplomatists,  are  deeply  tainted  at  their 
core  by  the  fact  that  the  root  of  them  is  the  desire 
of  rich  men  to  become  richer.  I  suspect  imposing 
political  schemes  and  imperial  interests  which  rest  on 
an  obvious  financial  purpose. 

The   oldest   and    most   imposing    of  the    political 


EGYPT  215 

reasons  for  armed  intervention  in  Egypt  is  the  fear 
that  some  other  Power  is  likely  to  occupy  it  before  us. 
In  other  words,  we  are  to  seize  Egypt  in  order  to  forestall 
France.  That  is  one  of  the  shallow  traditions  of  a 
school  of  diplomatic  quidnuncs.  It  still  has  its  charms 
for  the  editors  of  thoughtful  journals.  Such  a  policy 
in  itself  is  neither  wise  nor  honourable  ;  but  it  is 
needless  now  to  discuss  it.  There  exists  at  this 
moment  not  the  slightest  ground  to  justify  the 
suspicion  that  France  has  any  such  design.  Now, 
indeed,  less  than  ever.  The  evidence  of  the  Blue- 
books  is  all  the  other  way.  England  for  months  has 
been  pushing  on  France  to  consent  to  intervention. 
And  the  argument,  if  argument  it  can  be  called,  drops 
to  the  ground  by  the  force  of  events.  On  the  contrary, 
the  mutual  jealousies  of  France  and  England  in  Egypt 
are  a  very  strong  reason  for  not  interfering.  Whilst 
it  is  certain  that  France  will  make  no  advance  there 
if  we  do  not,  it  is  far  from  clear  that  we  should  not 
find  her  ultimately  waiting  to  dispute  our  conquest. 
An  expedition  to  Egypt  means  in  the  long  run  war 
with  France.  Is  that  to  be  the  crown  of  Mr. 
Gladstone's  political  life  ? l 

Again  we  hear  of  international  duties,  treaties,  and 
settlements  in  which  "  Europe "  is  interested.  But 
events  have  disposed  of  this  as  completely  as  they  have 
of  the  supposed  designs  of  France.  The  settlements 
have  settled  nothing  ;  and  "  Europe "  is  at  liberty, 
and  is  perfectly  willing,  to  make  any  settlement  de 
novo.  These  settlements  and  treaties  were  never  real 
settlements  in  any  political  sense.  They  were  con- 
cessions wrung  by  England  and  France  from  two 
Eastern  governments,  in  order  to  secure  for  our 
people  the  utmost  possible  advantage  in  their  private 

1  At  Fashoda  in    1898    we  came  within  measurable  distance  of  it 
(1908). 


216  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

and  financial  adventures ;  and  in  order  to  place  the 
internal  system  of  Egypt  at  their  entire  disposal. 
The  scheme  has  proved  not  workable ;  it  has  broken 
to  pieces.  Are  you,  sir,  about  to  restore  it  at  the 
price  of  a  formidable  and  guilty  war  for  the  sake  of 
the  persons  interested  ?  The  pretended  international 
and  European  nature  of  the  settlement  was  always  a 
figment.  It  was  a  mere  financial  expedient  which  has 
brought  anarchy  into  Egypt,  ruin  on  the  speculators, 
and  infinite  anxiety  to  the  governments  of  Europe. 

Now  we  hear  of  the  anarchy  in  Egypt,  and  the 
paramount  duty  of  suppressing  it.  Can  anything  be 
more  certain  than  that  the  anarchy  (such  as  it  is)  is 
the  direct  work  of  the  allied  fleets  ?  The  fleets  at 
Alexandria  made  the  anarchy.  Withdraw  the  fleets 
and  it  will  cease.  The  "  anarchy,"  as  it  is  called,  that 
is,  the  irritation  of  certain  classes  in  Egypt  with  the 
government  of  the  Khedive,  has  been  steadily  growing 
for  years.  It  is  the  obvious  consequence  of  any 
attempt  to  govern  under  the  pressure  of  foreign 
dictation,  supported  by  continual  menace  of  foreign 
intervention.  It  is  easy  to  produce  anarchy,  riot,  and 
massacre,  in  any  Eastern  state — or  indeed  in  many 
Western  states.  Send  the  fleets  to  the  Bosphorus 
and  deliver  an  ultimatum  to  the  Sultan  ;  you  will  see 
a  very  lively  outburst  of  fanaticism.  Or  try  the  same 
at  Tangiers,  or  at  Athens,  or  Zanzibar.  You  can 
always  produce  anarchy  anywhere  by  goading  a  people 
to  frenzy  where  any  spark  of  courage  and  independence 
is  left  them.  The  great  aggressive  empires  always 
begin  by  producing  anarchy  in  regions  which  they 
intend  to  annex.  France  did  this  but  the  other  day 
in  Tunis.  Anarchy  was  the  pretext  for  invasion  in 
the  Transvaal  and  in  Afghanistan.  You,  sir,  have 
shown  us  that  the  way  to  restore  order  there  was  to 
withdraw  the  menace. 


EGYPT  217 

As  to  the  lives  and  property  of  our  countrymen,  it 
is  your  duty  to  protect  them  in  all  things  right  and 
reasonable.  But  it  is  plain  why  they  are  in  danger  ; 
and  plain  how  to  relieve  them.  They  never  were  in 
any  risk  whatever  till  a  long  course  of  foreign  dicta- 
tion culminated  in  an  act  of  armed  menace.  Their 
safety  will  be  secured  by  withdrawing  the  fleet,  as  its 
presence  produced  their  danger.  There  is  no  more 
reason  to  suppose  that  (apart  from  foreign  dictation) 
the  lives  and  property  of  Englishmen  will  be  less  safe 
in  Egypt  than  in  Turkey  or  any  other  part  of  the 
East.  If  our  countrymen  choose  to  carry  their  wealth 
and  their  skill  to  distant  lands,  they  must  do  so  at 
their  own  risk.  If  they  behave  so  as  to  rouse  the 
hostility  of  the  population,  that  is  their  fault  and  they 
must  answer  for  it.  It  is  a  monstrous  assumption 
that  this  nation  is  to  be  responsible  for  all  their 
adventures ;  and  must  straightway  annex  any  country 
where  their  claims  to  domineer  are  thwarted  or  dis- 
liked. Our  adventurous  people  thrust  themselves  and 
their  business  into  every  country  in  the  globe,  civilised 
and  uncivilised.  The  sense  that  the  power  of  England 
is  behind  them  makes  them  reck  little  of  forbearance, 
good  faith,  or  conciliation.  They  assume  the  rights 
of  conquerors,  knowing  that  in  the  long  run  they  can 
always  force  the  State  into  conquest.  To  yield  to 
their  claims  on  the  State  is  to  increase  their  confidence 
and  stimulate  their  demands.  Such  a  policy  indeed 
can  have  but  one  issue.  It  would  lead  us  to  universal 
dominion,  a  result  too  preposterous  to  contemplate. 

We  hear  much  sonorous  talk  about  "civilisation," 
the  condition  of  the  fellah,  the  suppression  of  the  slave- 
trade,  and  the  "  Western  institutions  "  which  we  have 
planted  in  Egypt.  Excellent  objects  no  doubt ;  but 
what  have  these  to  do  with  eighty-ton  guns,  a  fleet  of 
ironclads,  sepoys,  an  armed  occupation,  and  virtual 


218   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

annexation  ?  These  laudable  purposes  would  be 
equally  good  reasons  for  annexing  Syria,  or  Asia 
Minor,  or  indeed  any  other  country  in  Asia  or  Africa. 
If  these  great  blessings  are  to  be  poured  out  from  our 
cannon,  let  our  missionary  fleets  and  armies  tour  round 
the  world  dispensing  the  gospel  of  civilisation.  To 
bring  them  forward  as  grounds  for  a  war  in  Egypt  is 
a  shallow  and  shameless  pretext,  which  no  one  would 
ever  have  heard  of,  had  there  not  been  one  hundred 
and  fifty  millions  or  so  of  Western  gold  trembling  for 
its  dividends  and  interest. 

Turn  it  which  way  we  will,  it  comes  back  always 
to  this — that  we  are  to  go  to  war  really  for  the  money 
interests  of  certain  rich  men  in  London  and  Paris.  It 
is  no  doubt  of  great  importance  to  them  to  get  their 
four  and  a  half  millions  regularly  out  of  the  taxes  of 
Egypt.  It  is  a  great  convenience  to  them  to  be 
exempt  from  taxes,  to  have  virtual  control  of  the 
internal  government,  to  have  concessions,  business, 
companies,  works,  and  the  rest,  to  have  their  own 
courts,  their  own  law,  and  their  own  judges,  to  hold 
a  crowd  of  offices  in  the  Egyptian  service,  to  be  a 
dominant  caste  in  a  foreign  land.  All  this  is  very 
desirable  to  the  persons  themselves.  But  it  is  no 
concern  of  this  country  to  guarantee  them  these 
profits,  privileges,  and  places.  It  would  be  blood- 
guilt  in  this  country  to  enforce  these  guarantees  at 
the  cost  of  war.  The  interests  of  these  rich  and 
adventurous  persons  are  not  British  interests  ;  but  the 
interests  of  certain  British  subjects.  And  between 
their  interests  and  war  and  conquest,  domination  and 
annexation — how  vast  is  the  gulf !  Does  it  necessarily 
follow  that,  because  certain  Englishmen  hold  large 
sums  in  Unified  bonds,  and  because  they  have  invested 
much  capital  in  Egyptian  works,  that  Europeans  are 
to  be  guaranteed  as  a  dominant  caste  ;  and  that,  if  the 


EGYPT  219 

Egyptian  people  make  any  effort  to  displace  one  rivet 
of  the  dominion,  there  is  instant  appeal  to  war,  ending 
in  virtual  conquest  ? 

Our  people  have  large  interests  in  the  debts  of 
America,  of  Italy,  of  Turkey,  of  Greece,  of  Spain. 
Much  British  capital  is  embarked  in  all  of  these 
countries.  Is  that  a  ground,  under  any  conceivable 
circumstances,  for  securing  our  people  a  local  domina- 
tion, to  be  followed  by  conquest  if  this  foreign 
dominion  be  not  patiently  borne?  Most  of  the 
conditions  present  in  Egypt  exist  in  a  degree  in 
Turkey  and  even  in  Spain.  There  too  our  people  are 
owed  enormous  sums  j  there  too  is  a  mass  of  British 
capital  sunk  in  industrial  and  commercial  ventures  ; 
there  is  very  often  anarchy  in  Turkey  as  well  as  in 
Spain  ;  and  there  would  be  anarchy  again  the  moment 
we  sent  a  fleet  to  produce  it.  There  is  a  great  deal 
of  barbarism  there,  and  a  fanatical  and  idle  population. 
But  the  man  would  be  a  madman  who  pretended  that 
these  conditions  in  Spain  or  Turkey  led  us  logically 
to  enforce  the  claims  of  these  creditors  by  war,  and 
ultimately  to  conquer  these  countries. 

There  is,  indeed,  but  one  plausible  ground  after 
all  for  armed  intervention  in  Egypt,  and  that  is  a 
ground  which  you,  sir,  have  torn  to  pieces.  It  is 
the  old  windbag  cry  of  the  Empire  in  danger.  Is  it 
possible  that  in  your  lifetime  and  in  your  ministry, 
this  phantom  is  again  to  rear  its  head  !  Your  whole 
political  life  is  pledged  to  the  principle  that  "  Empire  " 
is  no  justification  of  national  injustice.  You  have  told 
us  that  no  doctrine  can  be  more  criminal  than  this  : 
that  a  nation  has  a  right  to  oppress,  whenever  it 
becomes  convenient.  What,  then,  is  the  syllogism 
that  leads  us  irresistibly  from  the  safety  of  the  Empire 
to  the  conquest  of  Egypt  ?  The  safety  of  the  Empire 
seems  to  demand  any  achievement  that  can  enter  into 


220    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  visions  of  ambitious  and  restless  men.  Hot-headed 
soldiers  and  hare  -  brained  viceroys  swore  that  the 
Empire  was  not  safe,  till  our  ensign  floated  at  Kabul, 
Candahar,  and  Herat ;  as  they  will  tell  us  to-morrow 
it  must  float  at  Baghdad,  or  Pekin.  Sir  Bartle  Frere 
thought  the  sun  of  England  was  set  whilst  Cetewayo 
lived  and  reigned  in  Zululand.  The  theories  of  a 
military  expert  about  the  Empire  are  indeed  as  wild  as 
those  of  a  German  philologist,  and  as  anti-social  as 
those  of  a  Russian  Nihilist.  It  is  the  part  of  a  states- 
man to  treat  these  ravings  as  we  treat  the  barkings  of 
chained  mastiffs.  And  of  all  living  statesmen,  it  is 
especially  your  part  to  put  them  away  from  the 
counsels  of  the  State. 

When  the  windbag  pretext  of  Empire  is  pricked, 
the  one  residuum  is  the  Canal.  No  one  denies  that 
the  Canal  is  of  great  importance  to  this  country, 
on  political  as  well  as  commercial  grounds.  That 
importance,  as  a  highway  to  India,  has  been  much 
exaggerated.  But  granting  its  importance  to  be  real, 
to  what  extravagant  conclusions  is  the  Canal  supposed 
to  lead  !  Reasonable  military  and  international  pre- 
cautions against  any  interruption  of  the  waterway 
would  be  approved  by  public  opinion  in  Europe,  as 
much  as  they  would  at  home.  Is  there  the  least  reason 
to  suppose  they  would  not  be  accepted  in  Egypt  ?  It 
is  a  long  chain  of  hypotheses  indeed  which  leads  from 
the  Canal  to  the  conquest  of  Egypt.  The  freedom 
of  a  watercourse  less  than  one  hundred  miles  long 
through  an  uninhabited  desert  does  duty  for  the 
annexation  of  a  country  fifty  or  one  hundred  miles 
away,  larger  than  France,  with  a  population  of  ten 
millions,  and  two  of  the  greatest  cities  of  the  East. 

The  logical  sorites  is  this.  The  passage  through 
the  Canal  is  of  vital  interest  to  England.  But  the  use 
of  it  implies  that  England  should  dominate  throughout 


EGYPT  221 

Egyptian  territory.  Now,  this  domination  implies 
that  Englishmen  should  be  free  from  the  local  taxes, 
the  jurisdiction,  and  the  government.  But  they 
cannot  be  really  free  without  they  possess  the  virtual 
control  of  the  whole  internal  policy  of  Egypt.  Yet, 
if  this  control  is  interfered  with,  it  is  the  duty  of  the 
British  Government  to  secure  it  to  them  by  force. 
Again,  if  this  force  is  not  at  once  successful,  the 
virtual  annexation  of  the  country  must  follow.  But 
the  virtual  annexation  of  the  country  means  an  enor- 
mous burden  on  our  already  overgrown  Empire  ;  and 
it  will  almost  certainly  lead  to  a  war  with  one  or  more 
of  the  Powers  of  Europe.  Hence,  to  be  sure  of  a  free 
passage  through  the  Canal,  war  and  conquest  in  Egypt 
are  a  logical  necessity.  Q.  E.  D.  What  is  this  but 
the  old  story  that  the  Indian  Empire  would  not  be 
safe,  unless  Christian  women  could  be  freely  ravished 
on  the  Danube  ;  and  that  the  occupation  of  Cyprus 
would  shower  steam-ploughs  throughout  the  length 
and  breadth  of  Asia  Minor  ? 

We  look,  sir,  to  you  to  distinguish  the  rational  and 
legitimate  interests  of  the  State  from  the  personal 
interests  of  private  Englishmen,  and  the  fantastic 
projects  of  political  dreamers.  The  only  interest  of 
the  nation  in  Egypt  is  this,  that  the  Canal  shall  not 
be  closed  against  us,  and  that  no  European  rival  shall 
found  an  Empire  on  the  Nile.  There  is  at  this 
moment  no  reasonable  ground  to  fear  either  of  these 
evils.  But  what  measures  may  be  necessary,  by  force 
of  arms  or  international  agreements,  to  guard  against 
either,  will  not  be  refused  by  any  party  in  this  country. 
The  passage  of  the  Canal  could  never  be  guaranteed 
in  any  absolute  sense,  even  if  it  were  incorporated  in 
the  Empire :  it  would  still  be  liable  to  treacherous 
destruction  or  obstruction,  even  if  it  were  in  the 
Punjab  or  in  Ireland.  What  a  farce  then  to  tell  us 


222    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

that  its  existence  is  secured  by  meddling  with  the 
promotion  of  Egyptian  officers,  by  suppressing  native 
newspapers  at  Alexandria,  and  denying  the  right  of  a 
National  Chamber  to  add  ^300,000  to  the  Budget  ! 
To  pretend  that  the  freedom  of  the  Canal  requires 
the  reconstitution  of  the  status  quo  by  armed  inter- 
vention is  like  saying,  as  our  grandfathers  said,  that 
commerce  would  not  be  free  in  the  English  Channel 
till  we  had  suppressed  the  Republic  in  France.  In 
other  words,  and  you,  sir,  will  not  deny  the  position  : 
the  Canal  is  not  worth  the  evils  of  conquering  Egypt^ 
even  if  conquest  were  the  sole  means  of  securing  it. 
M.  Lesseps  tells  us,  as  common  sense  told  us  before, 
that  the  real  danger  to  the  Canal  lies  in  the  dread  of 
an  English  invasion  and  conquest. 

The  settlement  of  Egypt  on  some  tolerable  basis 
that  may  promise  stability  and  order  is  no  doubt  a 
British  interest  of  a  very  real  kind.  And  the  nation 
will  welcome  any  solution  that  the  counsels  of  Europe 
can  devise  —  without  war  and  without  oppression. 
But  two  things  are  certain :  the  Control  and  the 
status  quo  have  utterly  failed,  and  any  settlement  to  be 
forced  on  the  Egyptian  people  by  war  and  invasion  is 
doomed  to  failure  as  well.  The  status  quo  has  done 
some  good  ;  but  it  had  the  incurable  vice  of  being  the 
domination  of  an  alien  caste,  directed  to  secure  their 
personal  interests,  resting  on  intrigue  and  menace,  but 
not  on  acceptance  and  not  on  force.  The  ascendency 
of  a  foreign  race,  even  where  they  have  much  to  offer 
to  the  natives,  and  even  where  the  natives  are  so  far 
behind  them  in  wealth  and  knowledge,  cannot  be 
permanently  secured  without  conquest ;  and  it  must 
be  maintained  by  a  protracted  struggle  for  supremacy. 
If  that  ascendency  is  to  be  secured  under  new  forms 
and  after  a  bloody  contest,  it  will  be  the  occasion  of  a 
series  of  rebellions  and  wars.  We  repudiate,  as  equally 


EGYPT  223 

wild  and  criminal,  the  burdening  this  country  with  a 
British  Algeria  on  the  banks  of  the  Nile.1 

It  was  not  for  an  English  ministry  wantonly  to 
destroy  the  Control  and  the  so-called  settlement  of 
Egypt,  so  long  as  it  seemed  to  be  working,  and  apart 
from  a  general  revolution.  But  the  Control  and  the 
settlement  altogether  being  swept  away  in  the  crash, 
it  is  a  duty  to  review  the  situation  afresh  and  to  seek 
some  new  solution.  No  diplomatic  grandiloquence, 
no  international  treaties,  no  firmans  or  decrees,  can 
obscure  the  fact — that  the  effect  of  the  settlement  was 
to  make  the  Khedive  the  manifest  tool  of  his  foreign 
patrons,  to  secure  to  foreign  Powers  the  practical 
administration  of  the  country,  to  maintain  the  sixty 
thousand  Europeans  in  Egypt  in  the  privileges  of  a 
dominant  caste,  to  place  the  offices  of  the  country 
mainly  in  their  hands,  to  offer  unlimited  opportunities 
for  Western  enterprise,  to  revolutionise  the  life  of  the 
country  in  the  interest  of  Western  capitalists,  and 
finally  and  mainly,  to  secure  the  punctual  payment  for 
ever  to  Western  creditors  of  about  one-half  of  the 
entire  revenue  of  the  nation. 

To  saddle  the  fellahs  of  the  Nile  for  all  time  with  a 
debt  of  more  than  one  hundred  millions,  more  than 
the  debt  of  Prussia,  is  an  international  crime  which  no 
treaties  can  gloze  over  and  no  imperial  interests  can 
excuse.  To  carry  off  year  by  year  half  the  revenue  of 
a  poor  country  to  pay  to  foreigners  for  their  usurious 
and  fraudulent  loans,  forced  on  a  half-lunatic  despot,  is 
a  mere  financial  juggle  ;  and  nothing  can  make  its 
maintenance  worthy  of  a  just  nation,  though  its 
settlement  was  effected  by  right  honourables,  ambas- 
sadors, and  European  treaties.  One  need  not  deny 
that  some  temporary  relief  has  been  given  to  the 

1  Therein  lies  the  present,  continuous,  and  indestructible  "unrest"  in 
Egypt,  which  wMl  one  day  become  an  intolerable  evil  (1908). 


224    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

native  ;  or  that  the  money  of  Europe  has  afforded 
some  material  improvements.  But  the  reduction  of  a 
population  of  ten  millions  to  a  systematic  debt-slavery, 
enforced  from  time  to  time  by  war,  is  dearly  bought 
by  the  partial  introduction  of  Western  law,  railways, 
and  gas-works.  And  "civilisation,"  as  it  is  understood 
by  syndicates  of  bankers  and  concessionnaires^  is  not 
worth  the  bloody  and  fraudulent  crushing  down  of 
an  Eastern  people  under  the  insolent  dominion  of  a 
motley  tribe,  alien  in  race,  religion,  and  habit. 

Sir,  a  great  occasion  is  now  yours :  to  find  some 
tolerable  settlement  of  the  Egyptian  imbroglio,  with- 
out war  and  without  international  oppression.  The 
talk  we  hear  about  Imperial  interests  and  British 
rights  is  a  flimsy  varnish,  as  we  see,  to  cover  the  lust 
of  conquest  and  the  thirst  for  gold.  It  is  idle  to 
discuss  whether  Arabi  Pasha  represents  a  national  or  a 
military  movement.  It  is  certain  that  the  domination 
of  Egypt  cannot  be  secured  to  England  without  a 
desultory  war  with  the  natives  first,  and  a  possible  war 
with  Europe  afterwards.  The  permanent  exploitation 
of  Egypt  by  Western  speculators  and  adventurers  is  an 
object  which  it  is  worthy  of  your  career  formally  to 
repudiate  as  a  national  concern.  It  will  avail  your 
good  name  hereafter  but  little,  that  you  raised  your 
voice  against  the  persecution  of  the  Christians  in 
Turkey,  if  one  of  the  last  acts  of  your  official  life  shall 
have  been  to  rivet  on  one  province  of  that  Empire  a 
debt-slavery  to  their  Christian  masters.  There  is  one 
consideration  I  omit  j  for  it  would  be  an  insult  to  you 
and  your  colleagues.  I  will  not  conceive  it  possible 
that  you  can  be  about  to  commit  this  people  entrusted 
to  your  care  to  the  crime  and  risk  of  a  new  conquest, 
simply  because  the  official  policy  of  the  past  has  led  to 
a  disaster  which  you  and  they  from  the  first  foresaw. 

July  i,  1882. 


IX 
THE  BOER  WAR 

(December  1899) 

The  Boer  War  raised  so  many  of  the  questions  treated  in 
previous  sections,  and  illustrated  so  clearly  the  evils  of 
vicious  policy  abroad,  that  it  is  impossible  altogether  to 
omit  notice  of  it.  Nor  can  it  be  charged  that  my 
friends  or  myself  failed  to  assert  the  same  principles  for 
which  we  had  contended  for  a  whole  generation.  We 
formed  associations,  held  meetings,  published  addresses  and 
pamphlets,  and  for  four  years  sought  to  bring  our  fellow  - 
citizens  to  reasonable  views.  I  now  issue  a  few  extracts 
from  various  speeches  and  writings  of  my  own  during 
that  dismal  period. 

It  is  a  satisfaction  to  know  that  the  chaos  and  desolation 
caused  in  South  Africa  by  that  cruel  folly  are  being 
slowly  cured,  and  that  an  era  of  peace  and  progress  may 
be  looked  for  on  lines  so  different  from  those  anticipated  by 
the  misguided  authors  of  the  War.  As  I  write,  the 
three  chief  states  in  South  Africa  are  being  directed  by 
men  who  in  arms  or  in  council  were  the  most  eminent 
leaders  of  the  Boer  defence.  And  their  wise  and  generous 
efforts  promise  a  settlement  harmonious  and  prosper- 
ous—  now  that  our  country  has  wasted  £250,000,000 
and  20,000  lives — in  the  vain  attempt  to  conquer  and 
enthral  a  free  people  (100$). 

THE  foundation  of  Rhodesia  and  the  militant  phase 
225  Q 


226   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  the  Chartered  Company  caused  deep  alarm  in  the 
Transvaal  and  its  neighbour.  The  two  Boer  Re- 
publics which  had  trekked  forth,  fought,  and  suffered 
in  order  to  be  free  of  British  dominion,  now  found 
themselves  engulfed  by  the  Empire — North,  South, 
East,  and  West — finally  shut  out  from  the  Northern 
wilderness,  and  girt  on  North  and  West  by  British 
powers,  ;  11  controlled  by  the  great  "Empire-builder," 
who  openly  aimed  at  bringing  South  Africa,  from 
the  Zambesi  to  the  Cape,  under  the  Union  Jack.  If 
from  that  hour  the  Boers  did  not  strain  every  nerve  to 
prepare  to  defend  their  freedom,  they  would  have 
deserved  to  lose  it  without  a  blow. 

But  the  Transvaal  soon  found  its  independence 
menaced  by  a  new  force.  In  1886,  it  was  discovered 
that  most  valuable  gold-fields  existed  in  the  Transvaal, 
and  miners  and  gold  agencies  poured  in.  Wealth,  far 
more  vast  than  that  of  the  diamond  fields,  as  spread 
over  a  larger  area,  a  far  larger  outland  population, 
greater  fortunes  and  bigger  companies  arose.  In 
eleven  years  Johannesburg  became,  not  only  the 
wealthiest,  the  most  modern,  but  the  largest  town  in 
South  Africa.  The  annual  output  of  gold  rose  to 
about  twelve  millions.  The  expenditure  of  the  State 
rose  from  ^114,000  to  between  four  and  five  millions. 
The  Outlander  male  population  began  to  exceed 
that  of  burghers.  The  old  President  believed  that 
the  Outlanders  were  about  to  swamp  the  Boers.  As 
they  pressed  for  political  power  the  Transvaal 
narrowed  its  terms,  until  at  last  an  immense  body 
of  aliens — a  majority,  far  the  wealthiest  and  most 
cultivated — found  itself  in  the  grasp  of  a  jealous, 
obstinate,  unfriendly,  unyielding  government,  which 
regarded  them  as  in  a  state  of  permanent  conspiracy 
to  displace  it.  And  this,  no  dcubt,  was  quite  true. 

This  is  not  the  place  or  time  to  rehearse  the  trite 


THE  BOER  WAR  227 

story  of  Outlander  grievances  and  Boer  misrule.  I 
have  come  here  to  state  historic  facts,  not  to  plead  the 
Boer  case  or  to  excuse  or  justify  Boer  policy.  I  am 
quite  willing  to  believe  that  much  of  it  was  unjust  as 
well  as  unwise.  I  do  not  doubt  that  the  railway  and 
mining  and  dynamite  monopolies  were  oppressive, 
that  their  Protective  tariff  almost  outdid  that  of 
President  McKinley  j  that  the  education  of  English 
children  was  neglected,  as  indeed  it  is  in  France ; 
that  the  municipal  government  of  the  Rand  was  as 
bad  as  it  is  in  Spain  j  that  the  Chamber  was  open  to 
bribes,  as  it  is  said  to  be  in  the  United  States.  All 
this  and  more  may  be  true,  but,  as  Mr.  Bryce  justly 
insists,  it  gave  no  legitimate  ground  for  war. 

And  on  the  top  of  this  race  antipathy,  of  these 
bitter  memories,  of  these  incessant  menaces,  of  these 
well-grounded  fears,  came  the  Raid  ;  organised  by  the 
Prime  Minister  of  a  great  British  colony,  carried  out 
by  the  armed  forces  raised  under  Royal  Charter,  and 
led  by  men  of  rank  in  the  Queen's  service.  Of  this 
Raid,  wherein,  as  Mr.  Lecky  says,  a  Privy  Councillor 
and  servant  of  the  Crown  organised  a  conspiracy  to 
overthrow  the  Government  of  a  friendly  State, 
deceiving  the  High  Commissioner,  his  own  colleagues 
in  the  Ministry,  and  the  great  companies  for  which 
he  was  the  principal  trustee,  I  will  not  here  speak. 
The  Colonial  Secretary  told  Parliament  that  all  this 
was  "a  mistake,"  but  that  the  author  of  it  "had  done 
nothing  dishonourable."  Mr.  Rhodes  admitted  that 
he  had  upset  the  apple-cart ;  and  gracefully  retired 
from  the  scene  uncondemned. 

He  ceased  to  be  Prime  Minister,  but  he  continued 
to  build  Empire,  to  menace  the  independence  of  the 
Boers,  to  labour  for  colouring  South  Africa  pink  in 
spite  of  Boer,  in  spite  of  a  Parliamentary  majority  in 
Cape  Colony,  at  the  cost  of  our  good  name  and 


228  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

welfare  in  the  United  Kingdom.  Mr.  Cecil  Rhodes 
is,  after  all,  only  one,  no  doubt  the  greatest,  but  the 
type  of  groups  of  keen,  ambitious,  reckless  men  who 
have  forced  us  into  war — a  war  wherein  the  whole 
Empire  is  now  being  strained  to  its  roots  in  order  to 
crush  some  50,000  herdsmen,  whose  ancestors  for  a 
whole  century  have  struggled  to  be  free  from  British 
grip.  If  I  felt  free  to  speak  my  whole  mind,  I  should 
speak  of  it  as  a  new  Imperial  Raid,  carried  out  in  the 
name  of  our  Queen,  under  the  instigation  of  a 
combination  of  trading  syndicates.  It  would  take  us 
too  far  to  consider  the  justice  or  morality  of  these 
raids,  whether  Chartered  or  Imperial,  and  we  might 
be  told  that  all  this  was  "  unctuous  rectitude." 
Rectitude  of  any  kind,  it  seems,  has  gone  out  of 
fashion.  But  I  am  old-fashioned  enough  to  prefer  it 
to  unctuous  turpitude.  And  I  prefer  the  name  of  a 
just,  peaceful,  and  righteous  England  to  that  of  an 
Empire  scrambling  for  half  a  continent  at  the  bidding 
and  in  the  interest  of  cosmopolitan  gamblers  and 
speculative  companies,  in  search  of  bigger  dividends 
and  higher  premiums. 


X 

THE   STATE   OF   SIEGE 

(1901) 

The  lawless  proceedings  of  civil  and  military  authorities  in 
South  Africa,  in  colonies  in  which  neither  war  nor 
rebellion  existed,  called  out  strong  protests  from  lawyers 
and  politicians.  But  the  incredible  defiance  of  law  and 
precedent  by  the  Government  at  home  and  the  House  of 
Lords  raised  the  indignation  to  a  point  which  I  sought  to 
express  in  the  following  statement. 

The  course  then  followed  by  Ministers  and  the  Court 
of  Appeal  shook  to  its  foundations  the  system  of  Consti- 
tutional law  as  understood  in  England  for  two  centuries 
and  a  half.  I  am  prepared  to  substantiate  every  proposi- 
tion of  law  here  laid  down,  and  I  challenge  any  competent 
lawyer  to  displace  them,  writing  with  his  own  name,  citing 
precedents  of  authority  (1908}. 

"  THE  State  of  Siege,"  as  understood  in  some  foreign 
countries,  and  as  it  is  embodied  in  the  constitution  of 
France,  is  a  thing  unknown  to  the  British  constitu- 
tion and  abhorrent  to  the  principles  and  traditions  of 
English  law.  If  the  Empire  has  come  to  that  pass 
that  its  welfare  demands  our  submitting  to  such  an 
anomaly,  a  change  so  tremendous  should  be  expressly 
adopted  by  the  nation  and  sanctioned  by  Parliament. 
To  foist  it  upon  us  out  of  a  few  vague  legal  dicta, 
and  the  loose  assertions  of  Ministers  and  journalists, 
229 


230   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

would  be  treason  to  the  noble  history  of  English  justice 
and  English  faith  in  law  and  freedom. 

The  question  at  stake  to-day — whether  or  not  the 
Executive  of  this  country  can  at  will  impose  "  the 
State  of  Siege"  without  control  of  civil  courts,  and 
without  being  responsible  to  law  ? — is  a  far  bigger 
and  more  critical  matter  than  any  incidental  breach  of 
a  particular  law.  It  is  not  even  the  abrogation  of  a 
constitutional  privilege,  however  important.  It  is 
the  collapse  of  the  whole  edifice  of  constitutional  law 
as  understood  since  the  Revolution  which  swept  away 
the  Stuarts.  If,  at  any  moment,  the  Executive, 
without  the  assent  or  knowledge  of  Parliament,  can 
declare  itself  despotic,  and  can  suspend  and  defy  the 
entire  body  of  civil  law,  and  never  be  liable  to  give 
any  account  in  a  civil  court  of  justice — then  we  have 
gone  back  two  or  three  centuries  to  the  times  of 
Stuart  and  Tudor  absolutism,  and  even  worse  ;  for 
the  whole  fabric  of  the  Constitution,  built  up  by  a 
long  succession  of  Parliamentary  and  judicial  acts,  is 
shaken  down  to  its  roots. 

The  levity  and  the  apathy  with  which  this  formid- 
able change  in  the  position  of  every  citizen  has  been 
ignored  can  only  be  explained  by  general  ignorance  of 
law  and  the  passions  roused  by  the  war.  There  is 
too  much  readiness  to  give  any  licence  to  those  who 
are  fighting  the  Boers,  and  to  approve  any  weapon 
that  can  be  used  against  them  and  their  Afrikander 
kindred.  But  this  is  suicidal  folly.  In  flinging  over- 
board in  a  time  of  pressure  the  central  principles  of 
British  law,  we  are  sacrificing  the  best  achievements 
of  our  own  ancestors  and  preparing  a  novel  bondage 
for  our  own  descendants. 

Our  civil  rights  are  matters  of  general  principle, 
which  may  be  insidiously  undermined  by  casual 
precedents.  English  law  is  of  that  kind  that,  if  you 


THE  STATE  OF  SIEGE  231 

play  fast  and  loose  with  it,  it  vanishes.  Defy  the 
principles  of  liberty  under  the  law,  and  there  will  soon 
be  no  principles  remaining  at  all.  There  is  but  one 
constitutional  law  for  all  subjects  of  the  Crown,  where 
not  specially  modified  by  local  charter  or  Act  of 
Parliament.  Every  citizen  within  the  Empire,  of 
whatever  race,  is  imperilled  by  the  breach  of  con- 
stitutional right  in  any  part  of  it.  What  is  done  in 
a  colony  to-day  may  be  done  in  Ireland  to-morrow, 
and  in  England  hereafter.  If  the  government  of  the 
Cape  may  "declare  the  State  of  Siege,"  assume  the 
powers  of  Tsar  and  Sultan,  and  defy  any  court  of  law 
at  home  or  abroad  to  question  it,  it  may  be  the  turn 
of  Canada  or  Australia  next — presently  of  Ireland — 
and  a  future  Joseph  Chamberlain  may  have  another 
Morley  or  Harcourt  condemned  and  executed  at 
Aldershot  by  a  captain  of  horse  and  two  lieutenants 
of  yeomanry. 

"  Martial  Law,"  unless  it  means  "  military  law,"- 
a  formal  code  of  rules  dealing  only  with  the  army  and 
navy,  and  never  applicable  to  civilians  at  all — or  unless 
it  means  "  warlike  operations  "  and  "  military  violence," 
is  a  mere  nickname  or  slang.  The  idea  that  the 
"  proclamation  of  Martial  Law "  is  equivalent  to  the 
"  declaration  of  the  State  of  Siege  "  under  the  code  of 
the  French  Republic,  that  it  gives  any  legal  authority 
to  the  civil  and  military  servants  of  the  Crown  to 
exercise  arbitrary  acts  of  punishment  and  restraint  of 
civilians,  such  as  they  do  not  possess  under  the  law — 
all  this  is  a  vulgar  error.  Martial  Law  gives  no  fresh 
legal  right.  It  is  merely  notice  that  the  armed  forces 
of  the  Crown  are  about  to  take  those  measures  as  to 
persons  and  property  within  defined  limits  which  are 
directly  necessary  to  repel  invasion  and  to  suppress  open 
rebellion.  To  pretend  that  this  mere  "  proclamation  " 
confers  a  legal  immunity  on  the  Crown  and  its  agents 


232    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

to  suspend  law,  to  abrogate  civil  rights,  to  assume 
despotic  authority  in  general  administration  of  the 
country — is  a  wild  sophism.  To  admit  such  a  right 
would  land  us  in  such  a  state  of  society  as  when  the 
State  was  seized  by  some  Italian  Podestd  or  some  old 
Greek  "  tyrant." 

The  rights  and  duties  of  the  servants  of  the  Crown, 
when  order  is  so  far  disturbed  by  invasion,  riot,  or 
civil  war,  that  soldiers  have  to  act  in  a  military  way, 
are  perfectly  clear  and  reasonable.  It  is  their  duty  to 
meet  force  by  force,  to  kill,  seize,  arrest,  and  hold  all 
who  oppose  them,  and  all  who  interfere  with  their 
own  operations  of  war.  Their  acts  of  violence  are 
justifiable  whilst  they  concern  direct  operations  of 
war,  military  offences,  open  resistance  or  interference 
with  any  act  of  war.  Such  acts  to  be  justifiable  must 
be  both  temporary  and  local  ;  limited  in  time  to  a 
period  when  invasion,  rebellion,  or  disorder  openly 
exist,  and  limited  in  space  to  the  places  where  such 
disorder  and  war  actually  are  found.  When  invasion 
and  rebellion  are  crushed,  and  in  places  where  they  do 
not  exist,  the  pretended  "  Martial  Law "  gives  no 
servant  of  the  Crown,  civil  or  military,  any  legal 
right  to  do  anything  he  could  not  do  under  the 
ordinary  law,  no  right  to  administer  any  district 
arbitrarily,  no  right  to  inflict  any  punishment  on  a 
civilian.  Every  man,  from  Commander -in- Chief 
down  to  a  private,  from  Viceroy  down  to  a  policeman, 
remains  liable  to  be  tried  by  a  jury  for  any  act  done 
outside  law  during  war  or  rebellion^  and  he  is  criminally 
liable  to  punishment  for  any  illegal  act  committed 
when  war  or  rebellion  have  ceased  to  exist,  and  in 
places  where  they  have  been  suppressed.  This  being 
so,  many  scores  of  judicial  murders  have  been  com- 
mitted by  soldiers  in  South  Africa,  and  hundreds  of 
sentences  passed  on  civilians  are  not  only  invalid  in 


THE  STATE  OF  SIEGE  233 

law,  but  expose  those  pretending  to  exercise  them  to 
criminal  process. 

This  is  the  certain  law  of  England,  laid  down  for 
centuries  by  great  lawyers,  and  established  by  a  series 
of  statutes  and  judgments.  It  has  of  late  years  been 
repeated  by  such  authorities  as  Chief  Justice  Cockburn, 
Lord  Blackburn,  Mr.  Justice  Stephen,  Professor  Dicey, 
and  almost  every  jurist  who  has  treated  constitutional 
law.  Professor  Dicey  was  merely  repeating  accepted 
maxims  when  he  said  in  his  Law  of  the  Constitution^ 
3rd  edition,  1889,  p.  265  :— 

"  Martial  Law  "  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  term,  in  which  it 
means  the  suspension  of  ordinary  law  and  the  temporary  govern- 
ment of  a  country  or  parts  of  it  by  military  tribunals,  is  unknown 
to  the  law  of  England.  We  have  nothing  equivalent  to  what  in 
France  is  called  the  "  Declaration  of  the  State  of  Siege,"  under 
which  the  authority  ordinarily  vested  in  the  Civil  power  for  the 
maintenance  of  order  and  power  passes  entirely  to  the  army. 

"It  is  also  clear  that  a  soldier,  as  such,  has  no  exemption 
from  liability  to  the  law  for  his  conduct  in  restoring  order." 

"  This  kind  of  martial  law  [state  of  siege  as  understood  in 
France]  is  in  England  utterly  unknown  to  the  Constitution. 
Soldiers  may  suppress  a  riot  as  they  may  resist  an  invasion,  they 
may  fight  rebels  just  as  they  may  fight  foreign  enemies,  but  they 
have  no  right  under  the  law  to  inflict  punishment  for  riot  or 
rebellion  .  .  .  any  execution  (independently  of  military  law) 
inflicted  by  a  Court  Martial  is  illegal,  and  technically  murder." 

To  the  same  effect  writes  Mr.  Justice  Stephen  in 
his  History  of  the  Criminal  Law,  vol.  i.  pp.  207-216. 
He,  like  every  lawyer,  agrees  that  the  officers  of  the 
Crown  are  justified  in  any  exertion  of  physical  force 
to  suppress  insurrection  and  restore  order  ;  but  they 
remain  civilly  or  criminally  liable  for  any  excess,  and 
are  not  justified  in  inflicting  punishment  after  resist- 
ance is  suppressed,  and  after  the  ordinary  courts  of 
justice  can  be  reopened. 


234    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

This  view  was  affirmed  by  the  Lord  Chief  Justice 
Cockburn  in  his  charge  to  the  Grand  Jury  in  Reg.  v. 
Nelson  and  Brand  (1867).  He  shows  that  the  common 
law  is  the  inheritance  of  all  subjects  of  the  realm  ; 
that  in  settled  colonies  with  responsible  government, 
the  constitutional  rights  and  statutes  of  Englishmen 
obtain.  He  quotes  Lord  Chief  Justice  Hale  that 
civilians  could  never  be  tried  by  martial  law.  He 
quotes  Coke  "that  a  rebel  may  be  slain  in  the  re- 
bellion ;  but,  if  he  be  taken,  he  cannot  be  put  to 
death  by  the  martial  law."  And  he  quotes  Lord 
Chief  Justice  Rolle,  who  said  : — "  If  a  subject  be 
taken  in  rebellion,  and  be  not  slain  at  the  time  of  his 
rebellion,  he  is  to  be  tried  by  the  common  law." 
Lord  Loughborough,  afterwards  Lord  Chancellor, 
said  (Grant  v.  Gould^  1 792) : — 

Martial  law,  such  as  it  is  described  by  Hale,  and  such  as  it 
is  marked  by  Mr.  Justice  Blackstone,  does  not  exist  in  England 
at  all.  Where  martial  law  is  established  and  prevails  in  any 
country,  it  is  of  a  totally  different  nature  from  that  which  is  in- 
accurately called  martial  law,  merely  because  the  decision  is  by 
court  martial,  but  which  bears  no  affinity  to  that  which  was 
formerly  attempted  to  be  exercised  in  this  Kingdom  ;  which 
was  contrary  to  the  Constitution,  and  which  has  been  for  a 
century  totally  exploded. 

It  was  thought  that  Lord  Blackburn  did  not  entirely 
adopt  the  language  of  Chief  Justice  Cockburn.  What 
difference  of  opinion  there  was  turned  on  minor  points. 
On  the  main  question,  he  said  (Reg.  v.  Eyre^  1868) : — 

Even  if  an  officer's  illegal  act  was  the  salvation  of  the 
country,  that,  though  it  might  be  a  good  ground  for  the  legisla- 
ture afterwards  passing  an  Act  of  Indemnity,  would  be  no  bar 
in  law  to  a  criminal  prosecution.  .  .  .  The  mere  fact  of  good 
intention,  or  even  the  benefit  that  may  have  been  done,  would 
not  be  a  bar  to  a  criminal  indictment. 

He  held  that  in  a  settled  colony  the  settlers  carry 


THE  STATE  OF  SIEGE  235 

the  law  of  England  with  them.  He  held  that  the 
Petition  of  Right  which  prohibited  resort  to  Martial 
Law  in  time  of  peace  did  not  sanction  it  specifically, 
even  in  time  of  war.  He  held  that  the  Governor  who 
kept  up  Martial  Law  for  thirty  days  after  the  end  of 
an  insurrection  did  wrong.  And  in  arresting  and 
sending  a  prisoner  out  of  a  district  where  civil  law 
was  in  force  into  a  district  under  the  rule  of  soldiers, 
the  governor  "committed  a  grave  and  lawless  act  of 
tyranny  and  oppression." 

Now,  all  these  things,  for  ages  declared  illegal,  have 
been  done  in  South  Africa.  The  rule  of  the  sword 
has  been  maintained,  not  for  days,  but  for  years,  in 
districts  where  no  fighting  exists,  where  the  civil 
courts  are  open.  Civilians  have  been  seized,  im- 
prisoned, sentenced  by  soldiers  without  warrant. 
They  have  been  carried  off  into  districts  where  civil 
law  is  not  acting.  British  subjects  have  been  tried, 
condemned,  and  executed  for  treason  and  rebellion,  by 
troops  without  any  pretence  of  military  codes  j  and 
this  is  murder.  Coke  said  "if  a  lieutenant  execute 
any  man  by  colour  of  c  martial  law '  this  is  murder,  for 
it  is  against  Magna  Charta."  In  the  rebellion  in 
Canada,  in  1838,  Lord  Campbell  and  Lord  Cranworth, 
then  Attorney-  and  Solicitor  -  General,  advised  the 
Government  that  when  the  regular  courts  were  open, 
there  is  no  power  in  the  Crown  to  proceed  by  military 
courts.  A  long  succession  of  legal  authorities,  down 
from  the  Civil  Wars,  have  established  these  prin- 
ciples : — 

1.  "Martial    law,"   as    meaning    the    continuous 
government  of  any  district  within  British  dominions 
by  military  persons  or  tribunals,  is  unknown  to  our 
law. 

2.  It  is  the  duty  of  all  in  the  service  of  the  Crown 
to  repel  invasion,  crush  rebellion  and  treason  by  arms, 


236   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

and  to  execute  all  necessary  operations  of  war.  Rebels 
may  be  killed  in  fight,  and  all  who  are  assisting  rebels 
or  invaders  may  be  arrested. 

3.  It  is  illegal  for  soldiers  to  try  or  punish  civilians 
for  offences  triable  by  civil  courts  when  civil  courts 
are  open. 

4.  Every  official  remains  liable  to  trial  for  every 
breach  of  law  against    the   person   or   property  of  a 
civilian  subject,  even  if  taken  in  arms,  and  a  fortiori 
of  one  who  has  taken  no  part  in  the  war. 

5.  Such  an  official  has  a  good  defence,  if  his  act 
can  be  proved  to  be  a  direct  incident  of  actual  war  j 
but  of  this  a  civil  magistrate  and  jury  are  the  judges. 

6.  Nothing    but  an   Act  of  the   Legislature   can 
withdraw  from  a  civil  court  the  cognisance  of  offences 
committed  by  soldiers  against  civilian  subjects  of  the 
Crown. 

These  principles  have  been  flagrantly  defied  in  South 
Africa  ever  since  1900;  though  since  1689  there  has 
been  no  attempt  to  set  up  martial  law  as  a  system  in 
England,  even  during  the  Jacobite  rebellions  and 
Scotch  invasions ;  nor  could  any  lawyer  have  doubted 
that  to  set  up  martial  law,  so  as  to  suspend  all  civil 
rights  without  authority  of  Parliament,  was  illegal  and 
criminal.  Suddenly,  by  a  bolt  out  of  the  blue,  the 
Privy  Council,  under  the  lead  of  the  Lord  Chancellor, 
himself  one  of  the  Ministers  charged  with  illegal 
action,  assumed  the  power  to  tear  up  these  settled 
maxims  of  the  Constitution.  He  induced  the  Court 
to  refuse  full  trial  of  the  petition  of  a  civilian,  who, 
without  due  proof  of  any  act  of  assisting  rebels,  had 
been  seized  in  a  district  where  order  had  not  been 
disturbed,  where  law  courts  were  regularly  sitting,  and 
who  has  been  kept  in  a  military  prison  untried  for 
seven  months. 

The  obiter  dicta  of  the  Lord  Chancellor  at  the  hear- 


THE  STATE  OF  SIEGE  237 

ing  were  a  surprise  to  the  Bar,  recalling  a  Chancellor 
in  comic  opera  not  the  "keeper  of  the  King's  con- 
science." He  cited  the  trial  by  Military  Court  of  a 
naval  officer,  as  if  that  applied  to  the  case  of  a  civilian. 
He  "  protested  "  against  a  dictum  of  Lord  Coke.  He 
professed  to  think  little  of  Chief  Justice  Cockburn, 
and  set  small  store  by  the  case  of  Wolfe  Tone,  in 
Ireland  in  1798,  on  which  all  the  judges  and  all  the 
text-books  have  uniformly  insisted  as  a  decisive  and 
leading  case.  He  tried  to  distinguish  the  case  of 
"  foreign  invasion "  from  that  of  "  rebellion  "  and 
"  civil  war."  There  is  no  authority  whatever  for  this 
distinction  so  far  as  "  the  State  of  Siege  "  or  "  martial 
law "  is  concerned.  On  the  contrary,  the  case  of 
Wolfe  Tone  was  itself  a  striking  instance  of  war  and 
foreign  invasion  and  rebellion  together.  War  was 
indeed  "raging"  in  Ireland  in  1798-9.  Finally,  the 
bald  and  weak  judgment,  as  after  six  weeks' incubation 
it  was  delivered  in  writing,  takes  no  note  of  the  mass 
of  decisions  and  authorities  which  it  defies,  but  pro- 
fesses to  rest  this  vast  revolution  in  the  civil  status  of 
all  British  subjects  on  an  obscure  appeal  from  an 
Indian  court  in  1817,  a  case  which  turned  on  the 
conquest  of  a  foreign  realm,  during  a  state  of  war, 
and  on  the  claim  to  money  of  a  subject  of  an  Eastern 
despot — a  case  which  no  more  concerned  the  constitu- 
tional right  to  liberty  of  a  civilian  British  citizen  in  a 
time  of  peace  than  do  the  proceedings  in  Rex  v.  Bishop 
Gore. 

The  case  of  Elphinstone  v.  Bedreechund  (I.  Knapp, 
316)  was  the  case  on  which  the  Lord  Chancellor 
relied  for  reversing  Coke,  Hale,  Blackstone,  Campbell, 
Cranworth,  Cockburn,  Blackburn,  and  a  host  of  text- 
writers  and  commentators.  The  case  does  not  seem 
to  have  been  even  mentioned  in  argument,  and,  indeed, 
"it  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  case,"  as  the  Lord 


238    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

High  Executioner  puts  it  in  the  Mikado.  In  nine 
bare  lines  the  judgment  in  that  Indian  case  decides 
that  what  soldiers  take  as  prizes  of  war  from  a  foreign 
enemy,  during  war  in  an  enemy's  country,  cannot  be 
recovered  by  an  agent  of  the  foreign  despot  in  a  civil 
action  during  the  continuance  of  the  war.  What  has 
this  to  do  with  the  right  of  a  civilian  British  subject, 
in  a  district  where  peace  reigns  and  civil  courts  are  at 
work,  to  be  free  from  arrest  and  imprisonment  by 
soldiers  without  warrant  or  authority  by  statute  ? 

There  seems  to  be  a  strange  confusion  of  thought 
in  those  who  now  argue  about  salus  reipubllcae  suprema 
lex — "the  prerogative  of  the  Crown  to  assert  peace 
and  order  " — or  the  necessity  for  illegal  action  "  whilst 
war  is  raging."  It  is,  no  doubt,  the  duty  of  the 
Crown  and  its  servants  to  take  all  or  any  measures 
necessary  to  preserve  the  existence  of  the  State.  This 
necessity  would  justify  them  if  charged  with  unlawful 
action.  But  it  does  not  make  their  unlawful  action 
legal.  Nor  does  it  withdraw  that  action  (whatever  it 
may  have  been)  from  the  purview  of  a  civil  court 
hereafter.  The  Government  have  occasionally  in  a 
panic  authorised  a  breach  of  the  Bank  Act.  But  such 
breach  was  not  a  legal  act,  nor  was  it  withdrawn, 
before  any  indemnity  statute  was  passed,  from  review 
in  a  court  of  law.  It  was  a  thing  outside  law,  without 
sanction  of  law,  advisedly  committed  at  peril,  though 
excusable  on  adequate  justification  when  challenged  in 
law.  The  captain  of  a  ship  might  put  in  irons  or  kill 
any  of  his  officers  or  crew  whom  he  suspected  of 
plotting  mutiny.  He  might  run  his  ship  ashore  and 
blow  it  up  to  prevent  its  falling  into  an  enemy's  hands. 
But  it  is  no  part  of  the  articles  of  war  for  a  captain  to 
kill  his  own  men,  or  to  destroy  his  own  ship.  These 
acts  are  not  legal,  nor  can  necessity  make  them  legal, 
nor  withdraw  them  from  cognisance  of  a  proper 


THE  STATE  OF  SIEGE  239 

tribunal.  They  remain  utterly  illegal,  but  excusable 
on  adequate  proof  of  necessity.  The  acts  of  Govern- 
ment in  breach  of  law  may  be  morally  and  politically 
right,  and  legally  excusable.  But  they  always  remain 
lawless,  utterly  unprovided  for  in  law,  and  always  open 
to  consideration  by  courts  of  law.  If  not,  it  is  always 
open  to  a  Government  to  declare  itself  despotic — as 
Louis  Napoleon  did,  or  as  a  Spanish  dictator  in 
America  does. 

The  gravity  of  the  present  occasion  consists  in  this 
— that  for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  our  country 
since  the  Great  Charter  the  violent  assumption  of 
arbitrary  power  has  been  declared  by  a  court  of  law  to 
be  legal — or  at  least  not  open  to  question  by  any  court 
of  law — those  who  seize  the  arbitrary  power  being 
declared  to  be  the  sole  judges  of  the  rights  they 
exercise.  If  so,  it  is  open  to  Lord  Roberts  to  make  a 
pronunciamento  in  front  of  the  Horse  Guards  and 
declare  this  country  to  be  a  military  empire  in  "  a 
State  of  Siege."  The  Lord  Chancellor,  if  sitting  in 
court,  would  have  to  hold  :  "  Lord  Roberts  declares 
that  '  war  is  raging ' ;  and  we  lawyers  have  nothing 
more  to  say."  Nothing  that  was  done  by  Strafford  or 
Cromwell,  by  Laud  or  Jeffreys,  went  as  far  as  this. 
The  public  takes  it  quietly,  because  it  is  done  to 
Afrikanders  at  the  Cape,  and  they  trust  it  may  help 
Kitchener  to  end  the  war.  All  this  is  a  delusion.  It 
is  done  to  English  subjects,  and  cuts  into  the  roots  of 
our  Constitution.  It  is  a  menace  to  the  peace  of  our 
own  country. 

This  question  is  indeed  the  most  vital  and  sweeping 
in  the  whole  range  of  public  law,  for  it  concerns  the 
very  existence  of  law  itself,  not  of  any  particular  right. 
It  is  the  question  whether  England  is  a  country  of 
constitutional  law,  or  a  country  in  which  the  Execu- 
tive of  the  hour  can  outlaw  the  nation,  and  place 


240   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

itself  above    law.     If  this    new  claim   of  outlandish 
autocracy  is  admitted — 

'Twill  be  recorded  for  a  precedent, 
And  many  an  error  by  the  same  example 
Will  rush  into  the  state. 

There  is  but  one  public  law,  where  not  specially 
modified,  for  all  the  Britains.  All  Britons  enjoy  the 
same  constitutional  right  which  is  one  and  indivisible. 
And  the  foundations  of  this  right  disappear  if,  when  it 
is  necessary  anywhere  to  appeal  to  the  sword,  the  only 
rule  is  to  be — inter  arma  silent  leges — nay,  too,  silet 
jus — silent  jurisconsulti.  No  lawyer  doubts  that  in 
extreme  peril  and  confusion  the  servants  of  the  Crown 
are  bound  to  take  all  measures  to  save  the  State  and 
protect  their  sovereign.  But  to  tell  us  that  soldiers 
are  to  be  the  sole  judges  of  the  necessity,  of  the  condi- 
tions and  limits  of  their  powers,  are  never  to  be 
accountable  to  any  civil  tribunal,  are  to  be  what  the 
King  is,  i.e.  "can  do  no  wrong,"  and  are  judge,  jury, 
counsel,  and  witnesses  in  their  own  case ;  this  is 
enough  to  make  Coke,  Hale,  Blackstone,  and  Mans- 
field turn  in  their  graves. 

During  the  Gordon  riots  Lord  Chancellor  Thurlow 
said  : — 

But  the  King,  any  more  than  a  private  person,  could  not 
supersede  the  law,  nor  act  contrary  to  it,  and,  therefore,  he  was 
bound  to  take  care  that  the  means  he  used  for  putting  an  end  to 
the  rebellion  and  insurrection  were  legal  and  constitutional,  and 
the  military  employed  for  that  purpose  were  every  one  of  them 
amenable  to  the  law,  because  no  word  of  command  from  their 
particular  officer,  no  direction  from  the  War  Office,  or  Order  of 
Council  could  warrant  or  sanction  their  acting  illegally  ...  all 
persons  of  all  descriptions  being  equally  amenable  to  the  laws  of 
the  land,  and  answerable  to  them  for  their  conduct  on  every 
occasion. 

In  his  judgment  in  the  leading  case  of  Fabrigas  v. 


THE  STATE  OF  SIEGE  241 

Lord  Mansfield  thus  laid  down  the  law  as  to 
the  liability  of  a  colonial  governor  : — 

To  lay  down  in  an  English  court  of  justice  such  monstrous 
propositions  as  that  a  governor  acting  by  virtue  of  letters  patent 
under  the  great  seal  can  do  as  he  pleases  ;  that  he  is  accountable 
only  to  God  and  his  own  conscience — and  to  maintain  here  that 
every  governor  in  every  place  can  act  absolutely  ;  that  he  may 
spoil,  p  lunder,  affect  their  bodies  and  their  liberty,  and  is  account- 
able to  nobody — is  a  doctrine  not  to  be  maintained  ;  for,  if  he  be 
not  accountable  in  this  court,  he  is  accountable  nowhere. 

Now,  if  the  "  State  of  Siege  "  is  an  exotic  of  despotism, 
unknown  to  English  law,  the  "proclamation  of 
Martial  Law"  gives  no  new  rights  to  governor  or 
commander  ;  but  both  soldier  and  civilian  remain 
accountable  for  their  acts  in  civil  courts — wherever 
such  are  in  regular  sessions. 

No  one  denies,  be  it  said  again,  that  the  extra-legal 
acts  of  violence,  taken  in  an  emergency  and  the  storm 
of  war,  may  prove  to  be  justifiable  by  circumstances 
and  even  striking  instances  of  patriotic  duty.  But 
nothing  can  make  them  legal  in  themselves,  nor  make 
the  authors  of  such  illegal  acts  the  sole  judges  of  the 
necessity,  and  for  ever  unaccountable  to  justice.  The 
sinister  evil  of  to-day  is,  not  so  much  that  lawless  acts 
of  violence  are  being  done,  not  that  so  many  public 
speakers  and  writers  approve  of  their  being  done.  It 
is  that  the  Government  of  the  King,  the  Supreme 
Court  of  Appeal,  and  the  first  law  officer  of  the  realm, 
dare  to  tell  us  that  law  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
matter  at  all. 

Hitherto,  it  has  been  regarded  as  undoubted  law 
that  neither  the  Crown  nor  its  officials  can  lawfully 
u suspend"  law,  or  "dispense  with"  laws  ;  that  where 
they  violate  law  under  an  alleged  "necessity,"  they 
remain  liable  to  justify  a  bona  fide  necessity  when 
summoned  before  a  civil  court.  Prerogative,  official 

R 


242    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

immunity,  superior  order,  "  reasons  of  State,"  "  martial 
law,"  are  in  this  behalf  mere  fictions  and  figures  of 
speech,  unknown  to  English  law.  The  final  expul- 
sion of  the  Stuart  dynasty  turned  on  this  very  claim 
"to  suspend  law,"  to  "dispense  with"  laws.  And 
the  Bill  of  Rights  was  the  answer  of  the  nation,  which 
in  its  first  two  sections  expressly  declares  the  pretended 
power  of  suspending  law  or  dispensing  with  laws  to  be 
illegal.  Now  the  Bill  of  Rights  and  its  extending 
statute  the  Act  of  Settlement  are  the  constitutional  laws 
which  deposed  the  Stuarts  and  are  the  sole  title  to  the 
throne  of  the  House  of  Hanover.  So  that  the  consti- 
tutional party  have  made  our  gracious  sovereign  begin 
his  reign  by  exercising  the  despotic  power  which  cost 
James  his  crown,  and  which  is  forbidden  by  the  very 
statute  to  which  King  Edward  VII.  owes  his  own 
throne. 

It  was  a  strange  confusion  of  mind  that  caused  the 
Prime  Minister  to  say  that  if  Martial  Law  was  not  a 
lawful  system  it  ought  to  be  so  made.  Well,  there  is 
a  very  simple  mode  of  making  it  lawful,  which  is  to 
carry  a  Bill  through  Parliament  and  turn  the  British 
Constitution  upside  down.  He  might  just  as  well  say 
— "  If  the  Crown  has  no  power  to  tax  without  con- 
sent, it  ought  to  be  given  that  power,  and  in  the 
meantime  we  will  take  it."  Or  he  might  say — "If 
conscription  is  not  legal,  let  us  act  as  if  it  were,  for  it 
ought  to  be  legal."  This  is  just  what  Straffbrd  and 
Laud,  Jeffreys  and  James  II.  tried  to  do.  They  all 
said — if  the  constitution  does  not  give  power  enough 
to  the  royal  prerogative,  the  King  must  take  it — "  for 
the  good  of  his  people."  And  so,  the  Prime  Minister 
and  his  Chancellor  in  effect  say — "  The  King's  troops 
have  seized  civilians  in  a  district  where  order  has  not 
been  disturbed,  keep  them  in  a  military  prison, 
uncharged  and  untried  ;  but  to  talk  about  Habeas 


THE  STATE  OF  SIEGE  243 

Corpus  and  civil  courts  is  mere  l  legal  pedantry,'  for 
the  proclamation  of  Martial  Law  by  His  Majesty's 
officers  has  now  'suspended  '  law  and  'dispensed  with  ' 
the  Constitution  and  the  rights  of  the  subject !  " 

It  is  strange  to  find  the  twentieth  century  thus 
returning  on  the  seventeenth.  It  is  stranger  to  see 
the  constitutional  party  opening  a  new  revolution  and 
providing  future  weapons  for  terrorists.  Danton  and 
Robespierre  insisted  that  foreign  invasion  and  treason 
at  home  were  sufficient  authority  for  the  party  in  pos- 
session of  power  to  kill  those  who  opposed  them,  with 
or  without  legal  pedantry.  The  majority  may  turn 
even  here.  Those  who  hold  the  electorate  for  the 
time  being  fancy  themselves  exempt  from  the  risks 
which  were  run  by  a  Stuart  king.  But  the  electorate 
is  fickle.  Conscription  —  taxing  food  —  suppressing 
trade  unions — if  pressed  home,  as  some  imperialists 
talk  of  pressing  them,  might  lead  to  disorder  even 
here  ;  might  end  in  a  civil  war  and  surprising  changes 
in  the  temper  of  the  people.  Why  might  not  a 
democratic  or  a  socialist  majority  "suspend  law,"  and 
laugh  at  the  outcries  of  the  constitutional  party,  if 
they  ventured  to  appeal  in  their  own  behalf  to  "legal 
pedantry  "  ? 


XI 
EMPIRE  AND   HUMANITY 

(January  I,  1880) 

The  following  was  a  portion  of  the  Annual  Address  given  to  the 
Positivist  Society  at  Newton  Hall  on  January  i,  1880. 
This  was  towards  the  end  of  the  Ministry  of  Lord 
Beaconsfield,  and  about  the  epoch  of  Mr.  Gladstone's 
famous  Mid-Lothian  campaign.  It  was  published  in  the 
Fortnightly  Review,  February  1880,  vol.  xxvii. 

Though  it  is  now  twenty-eight  years  old,  it  is  re-issued 
because  in  all  its  essential  principles  it  is  now  as  true  as  it 
was  then,  and  because  succeeding  events  have  proved  how 
real  were  the  dangers  which  it  deprecated,  and  how  con- 
tinually the  same  evils  are  bred  by  the  Imperialist 
system. 

It  may  serve  to  explain  the  general  view  of  the 
political  world  on  which  the  preceding  essays  and  pro- 
tests were  based,  and  also  to  show  that  this  political  scheme 
of  international  justice  and  morality  is  the  direct  result 
of  the  religious  faith  expounded  in  preceding  volumes 
(1908). 

EUROPE  is  still  in  arms  :  each  nation  watching  every 
other  with  suspicion,  jealousy,  or  menace.  The  West 
still  groans  under  that  policy  of  aggrandisement,  of 
imperial  ambition  and  military  concentration,  which 
was  so  fatally  renewed  by  the  house  of  Napoleon ; 
244 


EMPIRE  AND  HUMANITY          245 

which  has  been  developed  into  a  system  by  the  houses 
of  Hohenzollern  and  Romanoff.  The  crime  of 
December  '51  led  on  by  a  sure  course  to  the  empire 
of  the  Corsicans,  to  military  government,  to  foreign 
wars,  till  it  awoke  by  a  fatal  reaction  the  military 
revival  of  Germany,  and  ended  in  the  foundation  of  a 
new  empire  of  the  sword.  That  empire  was  the  prize 
won  in  three  successive  wars,  each  one  carefully  pre- 
pared and  deliberately  contrived,  and  each  followed  by 
violent  annexation  of  territory.  The  camp  at  Berlin 
still  arms,  still  studies  new  wars,  still  menaces  its 
neighbours.  Worst  of  all,  it  fills  the  air  with  its 
spirit,  and  the  sense  of  foreboding.  It  fiercely  and 
cynically  proclaims  that  its  conquests  must  naturally 
lead  to  a  fresh  appeal  to  the  sword  ;  and,  for  its  own 
part,  it  hardly  cares  how  soon  the  appeal  be  made. 
Berlin  almost  taunts  Paris  with  waiting  so  long  for  her 
revenge.  To  the  east  of  Europe,  the  three  Empires 
watch  each  other's  movements  with  alternations  of 
suspicion,  menace,  and  intrigue.  Russia  seizes  the 
opportunity  to  recommence  her  old  career  of  conquest 
and  aggrandisement.  Italy  too  has  been  infected  with 
the  same  frenzy  ;  and  vapours  about  winning  more 
provinces  in  arms.  And  as  Lord  Palmerston  gave  us 
in  a  policy  of  self-assertion  and  of  menace  a  weak 
imitation  of  Napoleon's  empire,  so  now  our  Lord 
Beaconsfield  would  catch  some  rays  from  the  imperial 
crown  of  Germany,  and  parades  (against  the  weak  and 
the  uncivilised)  a  policy  of  Empire  and  of  War. 

For  more  than  a  generation  Europe  has  endured 
the  misery  of  this  new  imperial  ambition.  Within 
that  time  four  new  titles  of  Emperor  or  Empress  have 
been  assumed  by  European  royal  families — of  which 
titles  two  still  survive.  Within  that  period  six  great 
wars  in  Europe  have  been  waged,  every  one  of  them 
followed  by  territorial  changes  and  forcible  annexation. 


246   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

And  what  is  the  result  ?  Russia  overwhelmed  with 
a  military  cancer,  a  prey  to  a  social  confusion  such  as 
has  not  been  seen  in  this  century.  Germany,  with 
her  intelligence  and  her  industry  bound  in  the  fetters 
of  military  service,  governed  as  if  she  were  a  camp,  as 
if  the  sole  object  of  peace  were  to  prepare  for  war. 
France  staggering  under  the  most  tremendous  defeats 
that  this  century  has  witnessed,  and  still  not  clear  of 
the  long  agony  of  her  domestic  revolution.  Italy 
weighted  with  a  useless  army,  uneasy,  intriguing, 
restless.  Spain  still  weak  from  the  drain  of  a  series  of 
wars  and  internal  convulsions.  England  uncertain, 
divided  in  action,  continually  distracted  and  dis- 
honoured by  an  endless  succession  of  miserable  wars  in 
every  quarter  of  the  globe.1 

Such  is  a  picture  of  Europe  after  a  generation  of 
Imperialism  and  of  aggressive  war.  Who  is  the 
gainer  ?  Is  the  poor  Russian  moujik,  torn  from  his 
home  to  die  in  Central  Asia  or  on  the  passes  of  the 
Balkans,  doomed  to  a  government  of  ever-deepening 
corruption  and  tyranny  ?  Is  the  workman  of  Berlin 
the  better,  crushed  by  military  oppression  and  indus- 
trial recklessness  ?  Who  is  the  gainer — the  rulers  or 
the  ruled  ?  Is  the  French  peasant  the  gainer  now 
that  Alsace  and  Lorraine  are  gone,  and  nothing  rests 
of  the  empire  but  its  debt,  its  conspirators,  and  its 
legacy  of  confusion  ?  Or  is  the  wretched  Czar  the 
gainer,  hunted  like  a  mad  dog  ?  Or  the  imperial 
family  of  Germany,  so  ominously  bound  up  with  the 
future  of  the  Czar  ?  Or  our  own  Empress  and 
Queen,  in  whose  name  patriots  and  priests  are  being 
hung  in  Kabul  ?  Who  is  the  gainer  by  this  career  of 
bloodshed  and  ambition  ?  It  would  be  a  gloomy 

1  This  was  spoken  in  January  1880,  at  the  close  of  Lord  Beaconsfielu's 
ministry ;  and  in  the  twenty-eight  years  since  somewhat  similar  con- 
ditions prevailed  (January  1908). 


EMPIRE  AND  HUMANITY          247 

outlook  for  those  who  believe  in  Humanity,  in 
Progress,  in  a  Future  of  Peace,  were  it  not  that  we 
know  this  to  be  the  last  throes  of  the  monarchical  and 
military  system.  And  we  hear  the  groans  of  the 
millions — the  working,  suffering  millions — who  are 
yearning  to  replace  this  cruel  system,  none  of  their 
making,  none  of  their  choice,  by  which  they  gain 
nothing,  from  which  they  hope  nothing. 

For  more  than  a  generation  our  party  has  called 
out  that  there  can  be  no  safety  for  the  West  until 
the  grand  object  of  our  rulers  becomes  the  peaceful 
reorganisation  of  Industry.  It  has  insisted  on  Peace 
— the  status  quo — avoidance  of  all  attempts  to  resettle 
and  redistribute  the  world  :  it  has  protested  against 
the  consolidation  of  all  vast  states,  and  above  all  against 
the  formation  of  all  military  empires.  This  policy, 
our  central  policy  for  the  West,  has  been  much  more 
than  the  mere  cry  for  Peace.  We  are  no  simple  Peace 
Society,  without  a  policy,  appealing  to  mere  repug- 
nance to  bloodshed  and  waste.  Our  policy  has  been 
an  active  one,  a  policy  of  efficient  maintenance  of 
peace.  We  have  asked,  in  words  more  earnest  and 
consistent,  we  make  bold  to  say,  than  any  of  the  new 
school  of  Imperialists,  that  the  weight  of  England 
should  make  itself  felt  in  the  world  ;  that  our  whole 
power  should  be  committed  to  maintain  a  policy  ;  that 
England  should  play  a  great  part  and  speak  with  a 
voice  of  authority  in  the  councils  of  Europe.  Who  is 
a  patriot,  filled  with  the  high  memories  of  our  glorious 
name,  staunch  to  make  every  sacrifice  to  continue 
that  heroic  tradition  to  our  children  and  our  children's 
children  to  the  twentieth  generation,  if  we  (whose 
very  religion  is  regard  for  our  heroic  ancestors)  are  not 
amongst  such  men  ?  But  our  policy  has  been  Peace, 
the  active  maintenance  of  the  actual  settlement,  the 
protection  of  the  weak,  the  resistance  of  the  strong. 


248    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Nor  has  it  been  any  knight-errant  policy  that  we 
called  for.  Our  policy  was  to  use  the  whole  might  of 
our  great  nation  to  prevent  the  outbreak  of  war,  to 
discourage  and,  if  need  be,  stand  in  arms  against  all 
violent  recasting  of  the  map  of  Europe,  to  call  round 
us  a  confederation  of  the  Powers  interested  in  peace, 
to  strengthen  the  weak  Power  menaced,  and  to  defeat 
the  ambition  of  the  aggressor.  It  is  an  English,  not 
an  Asiatic  policy.  Who  can  overrate  the  power  of 
such  a  nation  as  England,  had  it  been  consistently  and 
firmly  pushed,  not  in  defence  of  British  interests  and 
menaced  empire,  but  in  the  spirit  of  Elizabeth,  of 
Cromwell,  of  William  III.,  to  defeat  the  schemes  of 
aggrandisement  from  one  side  or  from  the  other,  and 
to  place  itself  at  the  head  of  all  the  Powers  in  Europe 
who  seriously  desired  the  maintenance  of  order?  Our 
steady  demand  has  been  for  a  policy  which  might  give 
rest  and  calm  to  Europe,  and  turn  all  Governments 
from  their  foreign  schemes  of  conquest  to  the  one 
work  that  awaits  them — the  social  reorganisation  of 
industry,  and  the  establishment  of  a  progressive,  less 
centralised,  less  bureaucratic  system  of  government. 

We  have  protested  against  the  encouragement  of 
any  scheme  of  territorial  aggression,  however  plausibly 
veiled,  and  whatever  the  incidental  gain  which  it 
seemed  to  promise  for  the  moment.  Certainly  we 
have  called  out,  as  loudly  as  any,  for  the  free  develop- 
ment of  every  distinct  nationality,  for  the  free 
development  of  the  Irish  and  the  Indian  races,  as  well 
as  for  the  free  development  of  the  races  of  the  Balkans 
or  the  banks  of  the  Danube.  We  are  against  all 
oppression  of  conquered  by  their  conquerors ;  we  look 
for  the  dissolution  of  these  empires  of  conquest ;  we 
desire  decentralisation  of  vast  political  communities, 
and  not  a  never-ending  system  of  annexations  ;  and, 
above  all,  we  protest  against  military  government  in 


EMPIRE  AND  HUMANITY          249 

every  form.  But  we  protest  against  it  in  Calcutta  or 
Dublin,  in  Algeria  or  Paris,  in  Berlin  or  Moscow,  in 
Rome  or  Madrid,  quite  as  much  as,  and  even  more 
than,  we  protest  against  military  government  in 
Constantinople  and  the  Balkans.  We  do  not  pick 
and  choose  our  oppressed  nationalities  to  be  favoured 
with  the  blessings  of  self-government.  And  it  may 
be  that,  with  bleeding  hearts  and  almost  overwhelmed 
with  the  cry  of  horrible  sufferings  and  slavery,  we  may 
have  still  to  turn  aside  from  fair-seeming  projects  of 
redemption,  of  oppressed  Christians  in  the  Balkans,  or 
in  Asia  Minor,  when  we  find  them  but  the  masque  of 
a  merciless  lust  of  dominion  even  more  dangerous  to 
the  future  of  mankind  j  when  we  know  them  to  be 
the  signal  in  Europe  of  a  fresh  epoch  of  conquest,  war, 
and  imperial  ambition  ;  when  we  see  them  to  mean 
the  extermination  of  one  population  in  the  very  act  of 
protecting  another. 

Where  might  Russia  be  at  this  moment,  in  peace 
and  prosperity ;  where  would  Europe  be,  if  the  Czars 
had  followed  the  course  which  Auguste  Comte  urged 
on  their  Government  more  than  a  generation  since  : 
to  abstain  from  all  interference  with  the  Western 
nations  outside  their  own  vast  dominions,  and  to 
devote  their  power  to  the  social  elevation  of  their  half- 
civilised  people  ?  Again,  what  a  different  condition 
was  in  store  for  France,  had  she  set  herself  to  develop 
her  long  social  revolution  by  a  policy  of  decentralisa- 
tion, by  freeing  the  labour  of  the  workmen,  by  abolish- 
ing all  spiritual  interference  in  the  State,  by  the  simple 
maintenance  of  Order  with  full  liberty  of  speech,  of 
association,  of  conscience.  We  who  have  always  in- 
sisted that  the  Government  of  France  must -be  pro- 
foundly republican  and  essentially  social,  but  still  the 
government  of  men  and  not  of  assemblies  or  of  mobs, 
are  hardly  surprised  that  in  spite  of  the  triumph  of 


250   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  republic,  and  of  Universal  Suffrage,  all  parties 
in  France  feel  how  much  is  yet  to  be  desired.  We, 
at  any  rate,  have  never  been  superstitious  believers 
in  Democracy.  We  have  never  thought  it  was 
enough  to  proclaim  the  republic  and  then  rush  to 
the  ballot-boxes.  We  believe  and  trust  that  the 
establishment  of  the  republic  in  France  is  the  signal, 
as  it  is  the  evidence,  of  a  new  era  about  to  open  for 
the  West.  But  we  never  shall  believe  that  the  future 
of  France  is  secure,  until  she  has  found  a  Government 
and  men  to  direct  it. 

To  turn  to  our  own  country,  we  note  that  the 
three  great  questions  which  are  pressing  on  our  people 
to-day  are  the  three  burning  problems,  of  which  for  a 
generation  Positivism  has  called  for  an  active  treat- 
ment— the  condition  of  productive  industry,  the  state 
of  Ireland,  the  ever-growing  Empire. 

To-day  in  the  midst  of  suffering  and  dejection,  as 
for  so  many  years  past  in  the  hour  of  its  prosperity  and 
pride,  Positivism  appeals  to  the  territorial  lords  of  this 
soil  to  recognise  how  unwholesome  and  exceptional 
a  system  is  that  on  which  the  agricultural  industry 
of  this  country  is  based  ;  a  system  unknown  in  any 
people  in  the  world,  in  any  age  in  history.  To-day, 
as  for  a  generation,  Positivism  repeats  its  appeal  to  the 
ruling  class  in  England,  in  Scotland,  and  in  Ireland, 
that  the  sole  condition  on  which  the  social  order 
of  these  islands  can  be  maintained  is  by  the  systematic 
recasting  of  the  feudal  and  semi-military  settlement  of 
industry  into  a  social  and  purely  industrial  settlement. 
The  ornamental  squire,  the  dependent  tenant,  the 
hopeless  labourer,  are  things  of  the  past,  of  the  corrup- 
tion of  chivalry,  and  of  the  degradation  of  industry. 
We  have  been  told,  on  high  authority,  that  there  must 
always  be  three  classes  planted  on  British  land,  and 
maintained  out  of  the  products  of  its  fruits.  We 


EMPIRE  AND  HUMANITY  251 

repeat  as  firmly  as  ever  that  there  is  room  in  these 
islands,  there  is  justification  in  history  (I  will  not  say  for 
two  classes  only)  but  for  t wo  func tion s  only — that  of  the 
energetic  and  enlightened  director  of  manual  labour,  and 
that  of  the  disciplined  and  educated  workman. 

Again,  in  the  hour  of  gloom,  famine,  and  repression, 
we  repeat  what  we  have  claimed  for  Ireland  in  good 
times  and  in  bad  times — that  she  be  treated  as  a 
substantive  people,  one  of  the  most  interesting  of  the 
West,  entitled  to  a  Government  that  shall  satisfy  her 
legitimate  craving  for  national  existence.  Would 
that  we  could  see  the  end  of  this  ill-omened  and 
historic  struggle  to  crush  the  Irish  people  into  the 
mass  of  the  British  people.  This  is  not  the  place  or 
the  occasion  on  which  we  can  usefully  consider  the 
precise  scheme — perhaps  one  may  say  the  indefinite 
scheme — that  is  known  as  Home  Rule^  much  less  the 
details  of  any  question  of  land  reform.  We  who  are 
far  from  believing  that  a  Parliament  of  any  kind  is  the 
panacea  of  a  national  crisis,  are  not  prepared  to  think 
that  the  difficulties  of  Ireland  will  be  solved  merely  by 
a  Parliament  in  Dublin. 

We  are  not  about  to  propose — we  have  never 
proposed — the  erection  of  Ireland  into  a  foreign  state. 
But  we  call  out  now  with  all  the  increased  energy 
that  comes  from  increasing  acuteness  of  the  evil,  not 
for  more  bayonets,  more  suspension  of  law,  more 
menaces  to  the  Irish  people,  but  for  a  Government 
of  the  Irish  people  in  Ireland,  and  from  Ireland — a 
Government  in  the  interests  of  the  Irish  people,  not 
from  the  British  point  of  view,  or  the  point  of  view  of 
Saxonised  landlords.  The  Irish  peasant  has  as  good  a 
claim  to  be  protected  in  the  enjoyment  of  the  soil  on 
which  he  labours,  and  which  his  labour  creates  again, 
as  the  corporation  or  squire  who  has  been  imposed 
upon  him  as  his  landlord  by  a  foreign  law  that  he 


252    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

could  not  resist.  We  complain  of  the  mockery  of 
forcing  a  system  of  contract,  and  an  alien  law  of 
contract,  a  system  of  competition  and  the  higgling 
of  the  market,  on  a  people  who  are  hardly  in  the 
stage  of  contract  or  competition  at  all,  who  refuse  to 
accept  that  law,  and  who  are  not  really  free  to 
contract,  nor  sufficiently  independent  to  compete. 
By  enforcing  prematurely  a  system  of  contract  and 
foreign  law  on  the  Indian  peasantry,  they  are  being 
pauperised  and  ruined  :  by  a  similar  process  the  Irish 
peasant  is  driven  by  millions  into  exile. 

But  it  is  chiefly,  in  this  time  of  shame  and  afflic- 
tion, that  we  would  raise  our  voices  against  the 
revival  of  the  worst  tradition  of  the  past — an  empire 
of  conquest  and  domination.  We  condemn  this  war 
in  which  the  heroic  Zulu  people  have  been  decimated, 
as  evil  in  every  circumstance,  instigated  by  ambition, 
without  a  single  solid  reason,  condemned  by  the  very 
Ministry  which  in  so  weak  and  craven  a  way  has 
adopted  and  prosecuted  it.  It  is  a  war,  too,  carried 
out  with  every  circumstance  of  cruel  injustice  and 
insolent  barbarity.  We  condemn  it  not  simply  as 
being  an  act  of  unprovoked  war,  but  as  distorting  and 
poisoning  our  whole  system  of  relations  with  the 
African  races ;  as  laying  the  foundations  of  a  new 
African  empire  of  crime  and  oppression  ;  as  kindling 
the  worst  passions  throughout  the  fibres  of  our  entire 
colonial  system.  We  condemn  it  furthermore  on  the 
ground  of  the  exceptional  heroism  of  the  people  who 
were  its  victims,  and  of  the  great  man  who  was 
beginning  to  form  them  into  a  nation.  We  condemn 
it  most  of  all  because  it  has  blotted  out  one  of  those 
nascent  peoples  from  whom  alone  the  future  civilisa- 
tion of  Africa  can  be  hoped.1 

1  The  Zulu  war  of  1879  has  s'nce  been  followed  by  many  a  similar 
African  war  (1908). 


EMPIRE  AND  HUMANITY  253 

The  war  for  the  subjugation  of  the  Afghan  races, 
a  war  almost  equally  wanton  and  cruel,  presents  to 
our  eyes  the  additional  element  of  evil  that  it  must 
throw  back  the  task  of  administering  our  Indian 
empire.  A  war  which,  to  every  circumstance  of 
injustice,  bad  faith,  and  barbarity,  adds  the  crushing 
load  of  exaction  wrung  from  200  millions  of  our 
fellow-subjects,  a  war  by  which  a  military  dominion 
is  yet  further  militarised,  religious  hatreds  are  kindled 
anew,  and  the  race  feud,  the  secular  antagonism  be- 
tween conquerors  and  conquered,  is  traced  in  deeper 
and  bloodier  lines  upon  the  memory  :  such  a  war  is  a 
real  calamity  in  the  history  of  England.  With  all 
our  force  we  have  protested  against  it ;  and,  again, 
with  all  the  strength  of  religious  conviction,  we  call 
upon  the  conscience  of  our  countrymen  to  clear  them- 
selves from  this  portentous  offence. 

We  see  in  this  war  another  example  of  the  moral 
dangers  with  which  our  whole  imperial  system  is 
beset ;  and  we  have  not  hesitated  to  make  our  voices 
heard  in  the  special  circumstances  of  bad  faith  and 
cruelty  with  which  an  unjust  war  has  been  doubly 
stained.  Having  so  recently  criticised  the  particular 
conduct  of  the  actual  operations,  we  need  say  no  more 
to-day  of  the  almost  unexampled  enormity  of  hanging 
as  rebels  and  marauders  the  soldiers  and  priests  who 
resisted  the  invasion  of  an  unoffending  people.1 

We  who  look  forward  to  a  human  religion  can 
hope  but  little  from  the  Churches  in  dealing  with  this 
Central  Asian  crime.  The  official  priests  of  the  old 
faiths  accept  without  questioning  the  authorised  judg- 
ment of  the  political  Government.  They  are  engaged, 
in  obedience  to  the  Primate,  in  calling  upon  their  God 
of  Battles  (can  it  be,  their  God  of  Mercy  ?)  to  keep 

1  The  Afghan  war  of  1879-80  has  been  followed  by  some  similar 
Indian  expeditions,  as  in  Burmah,  Tibet,  etc.  (1908). 


254  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  British  soldiers  —  the  invaders,  the  burners  of 
villages,  the  hangmen  of  priests — in  his  good  and  holy 
keeping.  The  ministers  of  any  theological  faith  are 
not  prepared  to  argue  these  national  undertakings  with 
the  temporal  power.  The  priests  of  an  Establishment 
accept  the  worldly  policy  of  the  official  Government. 
It  will  not  be  so  with  a  human  faith.  The  religion 
of  Humanity  has  its  kingdom  in  this  world,  and  it  is 
its  special  privilege  to  treat  the  great  questions  of  the 
age  as  matters  of  practical  politics  with  full  knowledge, 
with  a  close  and  independent  judgment  of  every  argu- 
ment in  the  statesman's  craft.  We  make  bold  to  say 
that  Positivism  stands  alone  amongst  religions  in  treat- 
ing politics  from  the  point  of  view  of  politicians,  or 
rather  with  the  knowledge  of  politicians  ;  because  it 
is  an  essential  part  of  that  religion  itself  to  judge  the 
true  statesmanship  from  the  false,  and  to  uphold  the 
principles  which  lie  beneath  all  statesmanship  what- 
ever. 

But  in  a  far  deeper  sense  do  these  distant  crimes 
concern  us,  more  than  they  concern  the  theologies  of 
the  day.  In  the  religion  of  Humanity  there  are  no 
distinctions  of  skin,  or  race,  of  sect  or  creed  ;  all  are 
our  brothers  and  fellow-citizens  of  the  world — children 
of  the  same  great  kith  and  kin.  Whether  they  follow 
God  or  the  Prophet,  Christ  or  Buddha,  Confucius  or 
Moses,  they  are  believers  in  a  faith  which  we  pro- 
foundly venerate ;  they  are  all  sharers  in  the  glorious 
roll  of  which  we  would  perpetuate  the  muster.  The 
religion  of  Humanity  is  Catholic  in  a  sense  that  no 
(Christian  ever  was  or  could  be,  for  it  can  include  the 
countless  millions  who  reject  Christ,  who  passionately 
cling  to  another  phase  of  religious  life,  alien  and  hostile 
to  his.  In  this  very  month,  which  we  associate  with 
the  memory  of  Moses,  the  weeks  are  associated  with 
the  names  of  all  the  great  prophets  and  teachers  who 


EMPIRE  AND  HUMANITY          255 

maintain  the  religious  life  of  the  East :  with  Con- 
fucius, Buddha,  and  Mahomet.  We  embrace  them 
all  and  honour  them  all — the  great  patriarchs  and 
Hebrew  prophets  and  kings ;  the  great  founders  of 
the  empires  of  the  East,  Zoroaster  and  his  Sun 
Worship,  the  Theocrats  of  Tibet,  the  Theocrats  of 
Japan,  the  great  teachers  of  China,  the  great  chiefs 
of  the  Mussulman  world.  When  these  sacred  and 
heroic  names  are  read  round  the  altars  of  the  Christian 
fanes,  then  and  then  only  can  the  religion  of  Christ 
pretend  to  the  glorious  name  of  Catholic. 

But  we  of  the  human  religion  which  we  would 
fain  call  Catholic — if  the  word  Catholic  itself  had  not 
been  so  often  polluted — we,  whilst  the  priests  of  the 
Catholic  world  in  its  decay  are  calling  down  official 
blessings  on  the  heads  of  those  who  ravage  and  kill 
with  no  just  cause,  we  can  commemorate  the  sufferings 
and  heroic  deaths  of  tens  of  thousands  of  noble  men 
who  gave  up  their  lives  for  their  homes  and  their  race 
in  a  rude  sense  of  duty  to  their  tribe,  men  of  a  darker 
skin  than  ours,  of  a  lower  type  of  life,  in  the  mere 
beginnings  of  civilised  existence,  horribly  savage  it 
may  be,  but  still  our  human  brothers,  our  own  flesh 
and  blood,  fired  to  the  last  with  high  and  generous 
souls.  Nor  will  humanity  suffer  us  to  forget  the 
honourable  men  of  our  own  people  who  died  in  this 
same  cruel  work  in  the  honest  performance  of  their 
duty,  men  who  did  these  things  of  no  choice  of  their 
own,  utterly  ignorant  for  the  most  part,  themselves 
but  helpless  victims  of  perverse  rulers. 

No  !  it  is  not  that  we  have  outlived  the  spirit  of 
patriotism  and  care  nothing  for  the  bond  of  country. 
It  is  that  we  earnestly  cling  to  the  idea  of  country, 
and  honour  to  the  utmost  the  brave  men  who  so 
nobly  maintained  that  sacred  trust.  Those  who  have 
wantonly  crushed  the  Zulu  nation  and  broken  up  the 


256    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Afghan  kingdom  are  they  who  have  trampled  under 
foot  the  duty  of  patriotism.  It  is  for  us  to  insist  how 
precious  to  the  life  of  the  world  are  these  growing 
aggregates  of  people  when  the  lofty  conception  of 
nation  first  comes  to  supersede  the  narrower  idea  of 
clan  or  tribe.  It  is  we  who  defend  the  sacred  name 
of  country  ;  it  is  the  invader  and  the  conqueror  that 
drag  it  in  the  dust. 

Above  all,  we  would  make  it  clear  that  it  is  in  no 
spirit  of  party  that  we  speak.  Our  horror  of  these 
foreign  crimes  is  not  bred  afresh  in  us  at  the  prospect 
of  a  general  election.  To  those  who  for  a  generation 
have  protested  against  the  empire  of  conquest  and 
domination,  it  is  little  comfort  whether  Whig  or 
Tory  be  in  power,  it  is  little  that  we  hope  from  a 
change  of  party.  For  a  generation  we  have  called 
•out  against  every  extension  of  our  empire,  against 
every  fresh  act  of  military  or  commercial  ambition, 
against  the  military  oppression  of  India,  against  the 
opium  wars  in  China,  the  wars  to  break  into  Japan, 
against  the  opium  monopoly  in  India,  against  the 
Burmese  wars,  and  the  wars  in  New  Zealand,  in  the 
Cape,  in  Abyssinia,  in  Ashantee,  in  Zululand,  in 
Afghanistan  :  and  we  have  called  out  in  vain,  whether 
a  Liberal  or  a  Conservative  Ministry  might  chance  to 
be  in  power.  £htae  caret  ora  cruore  nostro  ?  What 
race,  which  hemisphere,  what  latitude,  has  not  seen 
the  unsheathed  sword  of  Britain  ?  These  crimes  are 
the  work  of  the  military  and  commercial  aristocracy 
of  England.  They  are  not  the  special  work  of  Lord 
Beaconsfield  or  the  party  he  leads. 

For  twenty  years  and  more  we  have  sought  to  make 
our  voices  heard  when  Hindoos  were  being  blown 
from  guns  and  hunted  like  wild  beasts ;  when  negroes 
were  being  flogged  and  hung  in  a  ferocious  and 
ignoble  panic ;  when  Chinese  Governments  were 


EMPIRE  AND  HUMANITY  257 

being  forced  to  receive  a  poison,  and  Japanese 
Governments  were  being  bombarded  into  receiving 
our  goods  ;  when  African  and  Asian  tribes  were 
being  butchered  on  one  worthless  pretext  after 
another,  the  real  end  being  always  a  sordid  lust  of 
new  markets.  And  to  us  who  know  all  this  it  seems 
like  a  mockery  indeed  to  hear  the  new-blown  horror 
in  some  patriots  of  a  war  of  conquest  and  aggression. 

A  party  attack  upon  an  unjust  war,  even  a  genuine 
protest  against  exceptional  barbarity,  will  tell  but 
little  in  the  long  run,  whilst  the  governing  classes  of 
this  nation  maintain  and  defend  the  system  of  military 
empire.  An  empire  gained  by  the  sword,  to  be  main- 
tained by  the  sword,  to  be  consolidated  in  the  spirit 
of  the  sword,  an  empire  to  supply  the  political  and 
military  classes  with  careers,  and  the  commercial 
classes  with  markets,  to  be  a  source  of  profit  and 
glory,  to  be  to  England  of  to-day  what  the  West 
Indies  were  to  Spain,  what  the  Levant  was  to  Venice 
— an  empire  which  is  to  be  above  and  outside  of  all 
discussion,  something  that  makes  everything  lawful, 
and  for  which  everything  must  be  suffered,  or 
committed,  or  risked  —  whilst  this  empire  is  the 
foundation  of  the  governing  system  of  the  entire 
governing  class,  protests  against  particular  crimes  are 
idle  words.  An  empire  built  up  step  by  step,  in 
blood  and  fraud,  in  rapacity  and  race  ascendency, 
without  one  thought  of  morality,  or  anything  but 
selfish  advantage,  is  not  likely  to  be  maintained  by 
mere  expressions  of  goodwill,  cannot  possibly  exist 
without  terrible  struggles  and  catastrophes.  It  is  in 
vain  for  a  political  party  to  invent  a  nickname  for 
their  opponents,  and  to  call  heaven  to  witness  that  this 
new  and  unheard-of  depravity  is  the  source  of  every 
national  offence.  Imperialism  is  the  creed  of  all  who 
find  in  the  military  empire  the  glory  and  the  strength 


258   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  England.  And  they  form  the  bulk  of  the  official 
and  governing  classes,  under  whichever  political  chief 
they  are  sworn  to  serve. 

To  us  this  empire  is  something  far  other,  very 
contrary  indeed  to  the  glory  and  gain  of  England. 
It  is  her  grand  responsibility  and  danger.  It  is  an 
anomaly,  a  huge  excrescence,  an  abnormal  and  morbid 
growth  of  this  fair  island  and  its  people.  It  is  the 
work  of  that  wild  orgy  of  industrial  energy  that 
marked  the  last  century,  the  plunge  of  an  energetic 
race  into  a  mercantile  and  colonial  saturnalia — much 
as  our  neighbours  in  France  plunged  headlong  into  a 
social  and  political  saturnalia.  That  empire  is  a  vast 
collection  of  distant  and  disparate  countries  and  races, 
incapable  of  assimilation  with  each  other  or  with  us, 
scattered  over  the  planet  in  every  phase  of  civilisation, 
with  every  variation  of  history ;  differing  in  religion, 
manners,  race,  and  capabilities.  It  is  unlike  every 
empire  that  ever  existed  ;  unlike  the  old  Roman 
empire,  unlike  the  actual  Russian  empire,  unlike  even 
the  bad  old  Spanish  and  Venetian  empires — inasmuch 
as  it  is  ten  times  as  vast  and  fifty  times  as  complex. 
Duly  and  rightly  to  govern,  in  the  high  and  true 
sense  of  the  word  (that  is,  wisely  to  develop  the  life 
and  energies  of  these  scattered  peoples),  would  demand 
the  strength,  the  wealth,  the  enlightenment,  the 
moral  conscience  of  fifty  Englands.  Our  one  England 
is  utterly  "incapable  of  this  superhuman  task.  And  it 
is  the  failure  in  the  attempt  that  is  the  shame  and 
rebuke  of  England. 

An  empire  which,  like  that  of  Russia,  forms  in  one 
territory  a  homogeneous  state,  alike  in  religion,  race, 
law,  and  manners,  has  a  raison  d'etre,  however  vast 
and  unwieldy.  But  an  empire  which  consists  of 
fragments  geographically  incapable  of  union  ;  where 
every  fact  of  race,  religion,  habit,  and  feeling  makes 


EMPIRE  AND  HUMANITY          259 

incorporation  and  fellow-citizenship  hopeless  even  in 
the  most  distant  future ;  this  remains  stamped  as  an 
aggregate  of  dependencies  and  not  an  empire.  But  an 
aggregate  of  dependencies  which,  is  for  ever  disturbed 
and  menaced,  and  for  ever  awaiting  or  forestalling 
attack,  which  contributes  nothing  to  the  home 
government  in  money,  or  men,  or  resources  of  any 
kind,  is  not  a  strength  but  an  increasing  weakness. 
It  must  pull  down  the  strongest  race  that  ever  trod 
the  earth  ;  and  as  it  pulls  them  down,  it  will  hurry 
them  from  one  crime  to  another. 

What  can  be  done  is  this.  The  government  of 
such  an  empire  by  thirty  millions  of  men  in  a  petty 
island  of  the  West  is  impossible.  But  it  may  be 
garrisoned  ;  it  may  be  occupied  ;  it  may  be  held  for 
a  few  years  longer  with  a  hard  mechanical  pressure, 
securing  external  order  but  repressing  all  true  national 
life  ;  it  may  furnish  markets  ;  the  wealth,  and  energy, 
and  dauntless  heart  of  our  race  may  keep  up  the 
specious  fabric  for  another  generation  or  two,  breaking 
every  now  and  again  into  further  seas  of  blood,  more 
conquests,  more  vengeance,  ever  sliding  down  the 
slope  of  tyranny,  cruelty,  and  panic.  But  it  cannot 
be  for  ever.  The  unwieldy  and  unorganised  mass 
may  break  into  fragments  at  any  day  under  internal 
convulsion  or  foreign  attack.  But  till  that  day  comes, 
it  may  still  be  held  by  sheer  force  of  energy,  as  a 
source  of  profit  for  the  moment  to  special  classes  of 
Englishmen,  corrupting  the  true  fibre  of  the  nation, 
and  really  paralysing  it  for  every  duty  in  Europe  and 
at  home.  It  is  impossible  to  govern  this  empire,  as  it 
ought  to  be  governed,  for  the  sake  of  its  members,  or 
so  as  to  assist  in  the  true  progress  of  our  people  ;  it  is 
possible  to  defend  it  for  a  season,  at  the  cost  of  the 
subjects  who  compose  it,  and  at  the  sacrifice  of  all 
that  is  truly  great  in  England. 


260    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

England  is  not  herself,  whilst  she  is  forced  thus  to 
keep  anxious  and  suspicious  watch  across  Africa  and 
Asia  over  her  huge  and  precarious  prize.  Our  states- 
men, our  journalists,  ^  our  preachers  come  bound  to 
every  question  of  policy  and  morality  by  the  silent 
influence  of  a  half-uttered  thought  —  "Come  what 
may,  the  empire  must  be  saved."  For  this,  they  close 
their  ears,  and  harden  their  hearts,  when  black  and 
brown  men  are  being  massacred  and  despoiled  j  when 
Cetewayo  and  Langabalele  are  shamefully  kept  in 
prison,  and  Theodore  and  Shere  Ali  are  hunted  to 
death.  As  a  system  of  slavery  prepares  the  slave- 
holding  caste  for  any  inhumanity  that  may  seem  to 
defend  it,  so  an  empire  of  subjects  trains  up  the 
imperial  race  to  every  injustice  and  deadens  them  to 
any  form  of  selfishness. 

And  if  it  hardens  our  politicians,  it  degrades  our 
Churches.  The  thirst  for  rule,  the  greed  of  the 
market,  and  the  saving  of  souls,  all  work  in  accord 
together.  The  Churches  approve  and  bless  whilst 
the  warriors  and  the  merchants  are  adding  new 
provinces  to  the  empire ;  they  have  delivered  the 
heathen  to  the  secular  arm,  and  they  hope  one  day 
to  convert  them  to  the  truth.  An  absolute  creed, 
salvation  through  Christ,  of  necessity  tend  to  an 
anti-human  work ;  they  forgive  the  rapacity  of  the 
trader  ;  they  inflame,  instead  of  checking,  the  rage 
of  war.  Christianity  in  practice,  as  we  know  it  now, 
for  all  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  is  the  religion  of 
aggression,  domination,  combat.  It  waits  upon  the 
pushing  trader  and  the  lawless  conqueror  j  and  with 
obsequious  thanksgiving  it  blesses  his  enterprise. 

We  will  not  believe  that  our  sound-hearted  people 
can  for  ever  continue  in  this  career  of  evil.  There  is 
a  national  conscience ;  and  when  it  stirs,  the  most 
imposing  empires  totter  and  break  up  beneath  it. 


EMPIRE  AND  HUMANITY          261 

To  us  this  empire  is  the  great  load  upon  the  future 
of  our  country,  almost  upon  the  future  of  the  world. 
It  can  be  transformed  first  and  shaken  off  at  last  by 
no  political  party— by  nothing  but  a  religious  move- 
ment. What  slavery  and  the  slave  trade  once  were 
to  our  grandfathers  here,  what  a  slave  industry  and  a 
slave  society  were  to  the  Americans  of  yesterday,  that 
empire  is  becoming  to  Englishmen  to-day.  A  cry  of 
emancipation,  as  of  a  religious  duty  to  redress  the 
sufferings  of  humanity,  is  rising  up  here  too.  Our 
people  have  no  share  in  this  guilt,  as  they  have  none 
in  the  gain  or  the  glory.  A  small  band  in  a  religious 
sense  of  duty  raised  their  voices  against  the  crime  of 
slavery,  and  the  slave  trade  and  English  slavery  passed 
away  like  a  nightmare  from  our  dreams.  Again  a 
small  band  of  religious  believers  and  social  reformers 
swore  in  the  sight  of  men  that  the  slave  society  should 
be  purged  from  their  nation  :  and  slavery  and  the 
slave  society  are  a  thing  of  the  past.  The  strength  of 
the  military  empire,  the  fury  of  its  partisans,  have 
nothing  to  compare  with  their  parallel  in  the  slave 
system  in  the  Southern  States.  And  where  is  that 
slave  system  now  ? 

We  are  no  fanatics,  no  blind  abolitionists  :  we 
claim  to  be  politicians,  and  even  conservative  poli- 
ticians. We  have  no  crude  project  for  abandoning 
the  empire  to-morrow  like  a  leaky  ship,  or  handing 
it  over  to  confusion  or  chance,  as  a  prey  to  new 
conquerors.  We  will  consider  all  these  questions, 
each  in  its  own  field,  each  pro  re  nata^  and  with  all 
the  data  of  political  science.  We  do  not  pretend  that 
the  blind  conquests  of  former  ages  can  be  resettled  in 
a  day,  or  that  we  ought  to  fling  off  the  tremendous 
responsibilities  with  which  ages  of  history  have 
burdened  us.  But  this  we  do  say  :  the  heterogeneous 
empire  must  be  regarded  as  a  passing  responsibility, 


262   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

and  not  as  a  permanent  greatness  of  our  country.  It 
must  be  administered  with  an  honest  desire  to  avoid 
all  fresh  strife,  and  the  ground  of  further  oppression. 
To  increase  its  burdens  and  its  limits  should  be  a 
public  crime.  To  secure  peace  in  it,  for  peace  is  its 
one  justification,  should  be  the  first  of  public  duties. 
In  the  meantime  it  must  be  governed  in  the  sole 
interest  of  the  countless  millions  who  compose  it ; 
and  not  only  in  their  interest,  but  in  their  spirit, 
until  the  time  shall  arrive  when,  part  by  part,  it 
may  be  developed  into  normal  and  national  life  of 
its  own. 

If  this  cannot  be  done,  if  it  cannot  be  begun  at 
once,  would  that  this  huge  crime  against  mankind 
could  be  ended  by  any  means.  To  go  on  as  we  do 
now  from  one  outrage  on  justice  to  another,  in  the 
vague  hope  that  some  day  we  may  begin  to  do  our 
duty,  when  all  our  subjects  are  perfectly  submissive 
and  all  our  neighbours  are  perfectly  friendly,  is  indeed 
mere  self-delusion.  We  can  accept  neither  the  selfish 
plea  of  national  glory,  nor  the  specious  plea  of  a 
civilising  mission.  Nothing  that  England  can  gain, 
nothing  that  the  world  can  gain  from  this  empire,  is 
worth  the  frightful  and  increasing  price  that  we  pay 
for  it  year  by  year  in  guilt,  and  blood,  and  hatred. 
We  listen  with  wonder  to  the  alternate  cries  of 
indignation  which  are  raised  by  our  two  great  parties 
in  the  State  :  the  one  burning  to  tear  to  pieces  the 
Mahometan  empire  in  the  East,  the  other  breathing 
war  against  the  aggressive  empire  of  the  Czar. 
Would  that  they  could  remember  how  they  and 
their  successive  Governments  in  turn  maintain  an 
empire  as  truly  military  in  its  basis  as  that  of 
Turkey  or  of  Russia  ;  one  which  gives  its  subject 
races  as  little  free  national  life  as  is  given  in  the 
Ottoman  system,  which  engages  in  more  wars 


EMPIRE  AND  HUMANITY          263 

of  annexation  and  conquest  than  the  Muscovite 
monarchy  itself. 

This  inheritance  of  empire,  we  have  said,  forms  for 
our  England  of  to-day  as  great  a  moral  peril  as  ever 
tasked  a  great  people  ;  yet  it  is  but  one  of  the  great 
problems  which  surround  the  future  of  civilisation. 
A  moral  peril  of  some  different  kind  hangs  over  other 
nations  too  ;  the  lust  of  dominion,  the  pride  of  race, 
the  thirst  of  fame  or  gain,  fill  the  air  with  wars  and 
rumours  of  wars.  Within  our  social  system  there 
rages  the  struggle  of  classes,  interests,  and  ambitions  ; 
the  passion  for  wealth,  the  restlessness  of  want.  The 
future  of  industry,  the  cause  of  education,  social 
justice,  the  very  life  of  the  poor,  all  tremble  in  the 
balance  in  our  own  country,  as  in  other  countries : 
this  way  or  that  way  will  decide  the  well-being  of 
generations  to  come. 

Are  these  tremendous  issues  to  be  left  to  themselves 
or  chance  ?  Is  it  enough  to  say  that  the  spirit  of 
Progress  will  work  them  right  in  the  end  ?  Do  self- 
will  and  self-love  ever  restrain  themselves  by  an 
enlightened  sense  of  their  own  true  interest  ?  Verily 
we  think  not ;  and  for  this  reason  we  are  not  willing 
to  abandon  the  greatest  and  the  oldest  of  all  human 
forces — the  power  of  Religion.  On  religion,  to-day 
as  of  old,  there  hangs  the  future  of  mankind  for  good 
or  for  evil. 

But  if  on  religion,  on  what  religion  ?  On  the 
religions  which  by  their  errors  and  their  failures  have 
brought  us  to  this  pass,  and  now  stand  aside  with  their 
eyes  fixed  on  things  above,  repeating  that  their  kingdom 
is  not  of  this  world  ?  We  more  and  more  need  a 
religion  that  can  deal  with  this  world,  which  has 
something  to  say  to  the  intellectual  and  social  problems 
of  our  age,  which  can  show  us  how  to  live  on  earth, 
not  how  to  prepare  for  heaven.  Can  we  turn  to 


264    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Christianity  in  its  latest  phase,  struggling  to  adapt 
its  creed  to  common  sense,  helpless  in  presence  of  our 
social  disorders,  and  actually  stimulating  the  passion 
for  war  and  conquest  ?  Or  shall  we  turn  to  the 
Deisms  and  the  Theosophies  which  are  even  more 
devoid  of  social  doctrine,  more  impotent  to  control 
our  acts,  busy  with  metaphysical  ingenuities  about  the 
nature  of  the  Godhead  or  the  creation  of  the  world  ? 
Far  from  it.  We  need  a  Religion  that  is  neither 
Mysticism  nor  Metaphysics,  but  one  that  can  explain 
and  enforce  human  duty  ;  which  can  master  men  of 
powerful  intellect  and  commanding  character  ;  which 
can  make  itself  felt  on  society  :  purify  it,  guide  it, 
transform  it. 

To  what  can  we  turn,  in  our  wanderings  and  our 
needs,  but  to  the  ever-present  idea  of  Humanity  as  a 
whole  ?  It  recalls  us  to  the  sense  of  fellowship  and 
social  duty  ;  it  lifts  us  from  our  interests  in  the  petty 
group  in  which  we  live,  to  brotherhood  with  the 
incalculable  host  which  peoples  the  planet  j  it  takes 
us  from  the  trivial  prize  of  to-day  to  the  cycle  of  ages 
that  make  the  past,  the  present,  and  the  future.  The 
multiplicity  of  human  interests  in  the  mass  restrains 
and  humbles  the  interest  of  the  unit ;  the  vast  sequence 
of  time  reminds  us  how  we  grow  ever  to  a  higher 
state.  We  set  before  our  hopes  the  civilising  and 
humanising  Power,  gathering  force  in  each  new  age, 
and  steadily  advancing  to  the  good  and  the  true.  We 
watch  it  with  our  aspirations  of  to-day  back  to  the 
wild  times  of  social  and  religious  war  in  Europe,  thence 
back  to  the  turmoil  of  the  Middle  Ages,  back  as  it 
emerges  out  of  systematic  war,  out  of  the  inhumanity 
of  the  polytheistic  ages,  out  of  slavery,  out  of  caste, 
out  of  nomadism  and  fetichism  and  savagery,  out  of 
cannibalism,  and  so  back  to  the  lowest  degradation 
of  the  human  type.  Humanity  has  sufficed  to  raise 


EMPIRE  AND  HUMANITY  265 

herself,  by  slow  and  certain  stages,  from  the  brutality 
of  the  bushman  to  the  dignity  of  Shakespeare  and 
Descartes.  Much  more  shall  she  suffice  to  free 
herself  from  the  ddbris  of  a  feudal  and  a  military 
epoch. 


PART  II 
SOCIAL   PROBLEMS 


SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

THE  Second  Part  of  this  book  is  occupied  with  questions 
of  Labour,  Unionism,  and  Socialism,  which  are  now 
urgent^  and  promise  to  be  even  more  urgent  in  the  future. 
Having  been  closely  associated  for  forty-six  years  with 
the  Labour  Leaders  and  with  Industrial  Reforms,  I 
now  collect^  in  what  is  largely  an  autobiographic  volume, 
a  few  of  the  Essays  and  Addresses  that  I  made  public 
on  various  occasions.  These  were  in  no  sense  casual 
utterances.  Being  all  based  on  the  Positivist  theory  of 
Capital  and  Labour,  which  I  have  held  from  youth,  they 
have  a  systematic  character.  And  at  the  same  time  they 
may  serve  to  mark  the  gradual  development  of  public 
opinion. 

In  1860  1  was  associated  at  the  Working  Men's 
College  with  F.  D.  Maurice  and  his  colleagues,  Thomas 
Hughes,  J.  M.  Ludlow,  John  Ruskin,  Dr.  Furnivall, 
and  many  others,  teachers  and  students.  In  1862  I 
joined  with  T.  Hughes ,  R.  H.  Hut  ton,  Godfrey 
Lushington,  in  a  public  controversy  upon  the  great 
London  lockout  in  the  Building  Trades,  and  I  became 
intimate  with  the  directors  of  the  great  Amalgamated 
Unions.  In  the  following  years  I  visited  the  northern 
manufacturing  centres,  and  studied  the  Unions,  Co-opera- 
tive, Owenite,  and  Industrial  movements  of  Lancashire 
and  Yorkshire. 

In  1867,  without  my  knowledge  or  consent,  I  was 
269 


27o   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

announced  in  Parliament  as  a  Member  of  the  Trades 
Union  Commission,  on  which  I  served  in  the  years 
1867-8-9 ;  and  I  drew  the  Minority  Report,  which 
became  the  basis  of  subsequent  Legislation.  The  long 
agitation  to  obtain  a  settlement  of  the  laws  affecting 
workmen,  together  with  frequent  visits  to  manufacturing 
centres,  to  Trades  Union,  Co-operative,  and  other  Labour 
Congresses,  brought  me  into  close  relations  with  many 
working-class  leader 's,  and  gave  me  an  intimate  knowledge 
of  the  working  of  their  societies.  In  1883  I  organised 
the  Industrial  Remuneration  Conference,  founded  by 
Robert  Miller  of  Edinburgh,  of  which  Sir  Charles 
Dilke  was  the  President,  and  which  was  addressed  by 
him,  by  Lord  Bramwell,  Mr.  Arthur  J.  Balfour,  Lord 
Brassey,  Sir  Robert  Giffen,  Mr.  John  Burns,  Professor 
Bee  sly,  Professor  A.  R.  Wallace,  and  others. 

As  President  of  the  English  Posit ivist  Committee 
from  1879,  I  continually  put  forward  the  industrial 
scheme  of  August e  Comte  on  the  platform  and  in  the  press, 
down  to  the  settlement  of  the  Labour  legislation  in  1907. 

The  six  Essays  in  this  Part  II.  deal  in  turn  with 
the  "  Orthodox  "  Plutonomy,  which  I  repudiated  in  the 
first  volume  of  the  Fortnightly  Review  in  1863,  with 
Trades  Unionism,  and  with  Co-operation — -all  three 
written  in  the  same  year.  They  are  followed  by  the 
Address  given  to  the  Industrial  Conference  of  1885 ;  by  an 
Essay  on  the  Socialist  type  of  Unionism,  1889  ;  and  finally 
by  the  Address  on  Moral  and  Religious  Socialism  of  1891. 

This  sums  up  the  views  on  the  Labour  Problem 
which  I  have  consistently  maintained  for  upwards  of 
forty  years  (1908). 


I 

THE  LIMITS  OF  POLITICAL 
ECONOMY 

(1865) 

On  the  foundation  of  the  Fortnightly  Review  in  1865, 
by  Anthony  Trollope,  W.  B  age  hot,  George  H.  Lewes, 
and  George  Eliot,  I  was  invited  by  the  Editor,  G.  H. 
Lewes,  to  write  on  the  great  Iron  Trade  Dispute  in 
Staffordshire.  In  the  third  numher,  "June  1865,  I 
wrote  the  present  Essay  on  the  Limits  of  Political 
Economy.  It  is,  I  think,  the  earliest  systematic  criticism 
of  the  entire  basis  of  the  "  Orthodox "  Economy  by  a 
student  of  that  so-called  '"'•science"  who  was  in  close 
relations  with  some  of  its  ablest  professors,  and  in  complete 
agreement  with  many  of  its  theoretic  doctrines. 

77>e  criticism  was  not  at  all  derived  from  Carlyle's 
growls  about  the  '•'•dismal  science"  nor  .from  RuskMs 
sentimental  diatribes  in  his  book — Unto  this  Last.  My 
views  were  based  on  Comte's  philosophic  proof  that 
Economic  dogmas  become  both  false  and  mischievous  when 
detached  from  Social  science  as  a  whole.  I  was  myself  a 
member  of  the  Political  Economy  Club,  and  was  in 
relations  with  John  Stuart  Mill,  Professor  Cairns,  and 
other  eminent  economists.  I  fully  recognised  the  value  of 
many  economic  researches  if  kept  in  strict  subordination 
to  Sociology ;  but  I  earnestly  repudiated  the  claim  to 

271 


272    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

erect  these  into  an  independent  science — much  less  to  make 
these  theories  practical  rules  of  society  and  life. 

Now  that  the  old  Plutonomy  is  almost  a  thing  of  the 
past,  I  re-issue  what  I  believe  was  one  of  the  earliest 
efforts  to  shake  off  its  tyranny  (1908). 


The  "  phenomena  of  society  being  more  complicated  than  any 
other,  it  is  irrational  to  study  the  industrial  apart  from 
the  intellectual  and  moral" — AUGUSTE  COMTE. 

FOR  the  evils  which  beset  our  industrial  system  several 
partial  remedies,  and  but  one  general  remedy,  is 
suggested.  Trades  Unions,  courts  of  arbitration, 
limited  partnership,  co-operation,  are  obviously  remedies 
both  limited  in  their  sphere  and  remote  in  their  effect. 
That  to  which  the  cultivated  public  agree  to  look  is 
the  general  diffusion  of  the  principles  of  economic 
science.  It  becomes,  therefore,  essential  to  know 
what  economic  science  is  ;  what  are  its  limits  ;  and 
what  are  its  functions. 

Few  opinions  are  more  rooted  in  the  mind  of  our 
industrial  nation  than  this  :  that  there  is  a  science  of 
production,  definite,  distinct,  and  exact — the  axioms 
of  which  are  as  universal  and  demonstrable  as  those  of 
astronomy  \  the  practical  rules  of  which  are  as  simple 
and  familiar  as  those  of  arithmetic.  Economists,  it  is 
believed,  have  worked  out  a  system  of  general  truths, 
which  any  shrewd  man  of  business  can  practically 
apply.  We  are  very  proud  of  our  great  writers  who 
have  created  this  science,  and  not  a  little  fond  of  the  skill 
with  which  it  is  handled  by  newspapers,  speakers,  and 
men  of  business.  It  is  the  intellectual  feat  of  our  age, 
the  sign  of  our  civilisation,  and  the  cause  of  our 
wealth. 

But  when  we  come  to  study  the  science,  we 
certainly  do  not  find  this  agreement  amongst  its  pro- 


LIMITS  OF  POLITICAL  ECONOMY    273 

fessors.  Agreement  is  the  last  thing  they  think  of. 
There  are,  indeed,  few  subjects  of  human  thought  on 
which  there  is  less.  There  are  hardly  ten  generalisa- 
tions in  the  whole  science  on  which  all  the  writers 
are  at  one,  and  that  not  on  the  details  but  on  the  first 
principles,  not  on  intricate  points  of  practice  but  on 
the  general  laws  of  production. 

What  is  the  true  theory  of  rent  ?  Who  is  right 
about  currency  ?  What  are  the  laws  of  population  ? 
Are  small  farms  or  large  farms  best  ?  Does  the 
peasant  proprietor  thrive  ?  Define  the  "  wages 
fund."  What  decides  the  remuneration  of  labour  ? 
State  some  of  the  laws  of  the  accumulation  of  profits. 
Give  the  ratio  of  the  relative  increase  of  population, 
and  the  means  of  subsistence.  What  are  the 
economical  results  of  direct  and  indirect  taxation  ? 
of  strict  entails  ?  of -trade  unions  ?  of  poor-laws  ?  of 
Free  Trade  ?  Let  us  suppose  these  questions  asked 
from  a  body  of  economists,  and  we  should  have  them 
at  cross-purposes  in  a  moment.  M'Culloch  would 
expose  "  the  erroneous  views  of  Smith,"  Ricardo  and 
Malthus  would  confute  each  other,  and  scarcely  one 
would  admit  the  philosophical  bases  of  Mr.  Mill.  We 
find  ourselves  not  in  a  science  properly  so  called  at  all, 
but  in  a  collection  of  warm  controversies  on  social 
questions.  What  would  be  the  state  of  medicine  if 
physiologists  were  hotly  disputing  on  the  circulation 
of  the  blood  ? 

No  rational  economist  can  claim  for  his  subject  the 
title  of  an  independent  and  recognised  science.  He 
is  content  at  most  with  systematic  dissertations.  The 
greatest  of  all  since  the  founder  of  this  study  in 
England,  Mr.  Mill,  is,  in  truth,  not  an  economist 
at  all.  He  is  a  social  philosopher,  who  has  thought 
and  written  on  all  the  chief  departments  of  the 
philosophy  of  society,  who  in  his  great  work  deals 


274    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

with  economic  laws  as  part  of  and  subordinate  to  social 
laws.  Neither  in  theory  nor  in  practice  has  this 
powerful  thinker,  much  less  have  his  profound  pre- 
decessors, Hume,  Turgot,  and  Adam  Smith,  ever 
countenanced  the  notion  that  the  laws  of  production, 
as  a  whole,  can  be  studied  or  discovered  apart  from  all 
the  other  laws  of  society,  without  any  reference  to  the 
great  social  problems,  by  men  who  have  no  fixed 
notions  upon  them,  or  none  but  a  few  unverified 
hypotheses  ;  who  are  without  a  system  of  politics,  a 
theory  of  human  nature,  a  philosophy  of  history,  or 
a  code  of  social  duty. 

Unfortunately,  this  truth  has  not  been  generally 
grasped,  and  the  name  of  economist  has  been  claimed 
by  men  whose  qualifications  are  limited  to  some 
acquaintance  with  statistics  and  a  talent  for  tabular 
statements.  There  has  gone  abroad,  too,  under  their 
shelter,  a  very  prevalent  belief  that  economic  questions 
are  fixed  and  defined  as  no  other  social  problems  are. 
Men  who  hold  the  application  of  theory  to  politics  to 
be  mischievous  pedantry,  men  who  regard  the  science 
of  human  nature  as  an  atheist's  dream,  are  quite 
content  to  believe  that  one  fragment  of  it  is  a  science 
by  itself;  a  science  so  simple  and  complete  that 
practical  points  of  detail  can  be  accurately  deduced 
from  its  rules.  A  whole  literature  of  spurious 
economics  exists,  wherein  the  postulates  of  the  subject, 
the  great  laws  of  human  nature,  are  gratuitously 
assumed  without  a  thought  or  a  doubt.  The  conse- 
quence is  a  tissue  of  statements  about  industry  which 
are  as  true  to  fact  as  Zadkiel's  almanack  is  true  to 
events ;  and  a  tissue  of  pretended  laws  of  industry  by 
which  selfishness  glosses  over  to  itself  the  frightful 
consequences  of  its  own  passions. 

The  truth  really  is  (and  a  very  moderate  reflection 
ought  to  show  it),  that  whatever  the  difficulties  of  a 


LIMITS  OF  POLITICAL  ECONOMY    275 

systematic  science  of  society,  the  same  difficulties 
meet  the  science  of  industrial  life  ;  that  all  the  cautions 
which  are  needed  in  applying  social  laws  to  action 
cannot  be  dispensed  with  simply  because  the  action  in 
question  is  industry.  Secondly,  it  will  appear  that  the 
attempt  to  deal  with  the  facts  of  production  separately 
from  other  facts  of  society  can  be  carried  only  to  a 
very  limited  extent,  and  under  very  strict  conditions. 
Thirdly,  that  the  attempt  to  generalise  absolutely  from 
certain  special  phases  of  modern  civilisation  is  a  radical 
and  very  dangerous  error.  It  results  from  the  com- 
bined effect  of  these  causes  that  the  popular  conception 
of  the  functions  of  Political  Economy  is  very  wide  of 
its  true  place  both  in  philosophy  and  politics. 


Political  economy  professes  to  systematise  the  laws 
of  production  and  distribution.  It  analyses  the  creation 
of  wealth.  It  lays  down  the  theory  of  material  in- 
dustry. It  is  obvious  that  every  act  of  production, 
all  industry,  in  short,  is  due  to  an  effort  of  the  human 
will.  It  forms  a  certain  class  of  the  things  that  men 
do.  It  is  determined  by  all  the  combined  motives 
which  precede  action.  Men  do  not  labour  or  ac- 
cumulate involuntarily  any  more  than  they  fight  or 
pray  involuntarily.  In  our  age  we  see  many  men 
labouring  and  accumulating  under  the  influence  of 
one  leading  motive,  and  we  can  hardly  conceive  this 
motive  ceasing  to  be  powerful.  But  in  one  bygone 
age  we  should  have  seen  them  fighting  under  a 
dominant  motive  ;  in  another  age,  praying  under  a 
dominant  motive  ;  in  another,  doing  both  together 
under  a  motive  so  dominant  that  few  persons  then 
could  conceive  it  less  strong.  In  the  ages  of  faith, 


276    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

fighting  and  praying  seemed  to  come  by  instinct  from 
"  immutable  laws  of  society,"  to  be  natural  results  of 
uncontrollable  tendencies.  We  have  lived  to  see  that 
men  can  do  both  or  either  in  the  most  different  ways, 
under  totally  different  motives,  in  opposite  social  states, 
and  indeed  can  cease  in  a  great  measure  to  do  either. 

It  may  be  objected  that  a  certain  amount  of  labour 
and  accumulation  to  satisfy  the  physical  wants  of  life 
is  necessary  in  a  sense  in  which  no  other  form  of 
activity  is.  Men  must  overcome  hunger  and  cold 
if  they  live  at  all.  Doubtless ;  but  the  Bushman  does 
this,  and  so  does  the  Gipsy.  The  minimum  is  too 
small  to  be  worth  consideration.  All  between  this 
and  our  modern  industry  is  in  the  truest  sense  voluntary. 
For  all  practical  purposes,  then,  production  is  only  a 
branch  of  free  human  activity ;  liable,  like  it,  to  every 
modification  which  altered  motives  produce.  Labour 
and  accumulation  might  be  almost  indefinitely  increased 
or  diminished,  as  the  motives  in  which  they  now 
originate  were  stimulated  or  declined.  They  might 
also  remain  at  their  present  or  change  to  any  other 
level,  and  spring  from  a  totally  different  set  of  motives, 
and  under  totally  fresh  conditions.  Man  of  course  is 
limited  by  his  own  physical  powers  and  the  general  con- 
ditions of  matter; 'but  with  our  present  intellectual 
resources  these  limits  are  so  vast  in  civilised  countries, 
that,  practically,  man's  industrial  life  is  quite  at  his 
own  disposal.  Production,  accumulation,  and  distribu- 
tion might  be  varied  almost  without  limit,  both  in 
extent,  mode,  and  proportion,  provided  we  could  vary 
the  motives  which  actuate  conduct.  In  other  words, 
the  forms  of  our  industrial  life — the  laws  of  wealth,  in 
short — depend  on  the  sum  of  our  actual  civilisation. 

A  truth  so  simple  as  this  has  been  so  much 
obscured  by  economic  sophisms  that  a  little  illustration 
may  not  be  out  of  place.  In  the  first  place,  no  one 


LIMITS  OF  POLITICAL  ECONOMY    277 

who  reflects  can  fail  to  see  how  completely  our  present 
industry  is  the  creation  of  our  present  ideas  and  feel- 
ings. Men  produce  and  accumulate  incessantly  around 
us  chiefly  from  the  influence  of  a  desire  of  wealth  or 
useful  things.  But  it  is  obvious  that  this  desire  might 
very  easily  become  incalculably  feebler,  and  that  pro- 
duction and  accumulation  might  be  indefinitely  less. 
As  a  matter  of  history,  we  know  that  in  almost  every 
age  of  human  life  it  has  been  far  weaker  than  with  us 
now ;  and  that  it  is  only  in  certain  fractions  of  one 
race  of  human  kind  that  it  is  as  strong  as  it  is  now. 
When  we  compare  the  industrial  energy  of  an  English- 
man or  an  American  with  that  of  an  Arab,  of  a 
modern  European  with  that  of  an  ancient  Greek,  we 
can  see  hardly  any  limit  to  the  variety  of  degree 
in  which  the  love  of  wealth  may  stimulate  human 
beings  to  action.  Nor  is  it  even  the  invariable 
associate  of  high  intelligence  and  cultivation.  On  the 
contrary,  classical  and  Oriental  society  abound  with 
examples  of  high  intellectual  condition,  as  religious 
society  throughout  the  world  abounds  with  examples 
of  high  moral  condition,  with  a  minimum  of  production 
and  accumulation.  In  a  word,  the  instinct  and  the 
habit  of  production  are  just  as  variable  as  human  nature. 
The  second  case,  that  production  and  accumula- 
tion might  follow  from  other  than  the  prevalent 
motives  which  now  largely  stimulate  them,  is  some- 
what less  obvious  but  not  less  true.  In  vast  permanent 
societies,  in  long  ages  of  history,  populations  such  as 
the  Egyptian  and  the  Indian,  under  a  strict  caste 
system,  have  shown  an  astonishing  degree  of  industry, 
directly  stimulated  by  habit,  social  feeling  and  religious 
duty,  and,  in  a  very  slight  degree,  by  personal  desire 
of  gain.  In  religious  societies  under  very  different 
kinds  of  faith,  very  active  industry,  on  a  scale  quite 
decisive  as  an  experiment,  has  been  stimulated  by 


278    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

purely  religious  motives.  Some  of  the  most  splendid 
results  of  industry  ever  recorded,  —  the  clearing  of 
wildernesses ;  vast  public  works,  such  as  bridges, 
monuments,  and  temples  ;  the  training  of  whole  races 
of  savages  into  habits  of  toil, — have  been  accomplished 
by  purely  religious  bodies  on  purely  religious  motives, 
by  monks,  missionaries,  and  priests.  In  China,  in 
which  there  is,  perhaps,  the  most  universal  of  all 
industries,  labour  is  stimulated  by  motives  mainly 
domestic,  partly  personal,  but  in  scarcely  any  degree 
by  the  desire  of  accumulation.  In  practical  slavery, 
which  we  must  never  forget  is  or  has  been  the  basis 
of  a  vast  portion  of  human  industry,  labour  is  obviously 
due  to  other  motives  than  that  of  the  acquisition  of 
gain  :  in  very  low  cases,  to  force  and  fear ;  in  very 
favourable  instances  of  ancient  slavery  and  modern 
serfdom,  partly  to  personal  affection,  partly  to  habit, 
as  we  often  see  in  the  domestic  animals. 

These  are  the  extremes ;  but  between  these  cases 
and  our  own  industry  there  is  every  shade  of  motive 
and  spirit  from  which  systematic  industry  has  sprung. 
We  are  all  familiar  with  noble  instances  of  labour  in 
every  sphere,  under  all  conditions,  from  which  every 
trace  of  personal  interest  has  been  withdrawn.  It 
would  be  as  degrading  to  suppose  that  the  great 
industrial  benefactors  of  mankind,  whether  inventors, 
capitalists,  or  labourers,  have  been  moved  by  the  mere 
love  of  acquisition,  as  that  our  great  intellectual 
benefactors  have  been  moved  by  mere  motives  of 
vanity,  or  the  practical  by  mere  thirst  for  power. 

Industry  has  never  been  so  systematically  stimu- 
lated by  motives  of  religious  duty  or  affection  as  some 
other  forms  of  activity  in  earlier  civilisations ;  but  no 
historical  observer  would  deny  that  it  is  perfectly  possible 
that  it  should  be.  If  any  society  had  been  educated 
for  labour  with  the  same  consensus  of  moral  and  social 


LIMITS  OF  POLITICAL  ECONOMY    279 

forces  which  trained  the  early  Romans  for  war,  and  the 
Israelites  in  the  desert  for  worship,  we  should  have  had 
the  case  of  a  people  in  whom  industry  was  singularly 
developed,  and  the  desire  of  gain  practically  extinct. 
In  a  word,  the  studies  of  human  nature  and  history 
combine  to  prove  that  industrial  activity  may  be 
organised,  and  in  a  great  degree  is  now  organised,  on 
moving  principles,  as  various  and  complex  as  the 
character  of  man  himself. 

It  is  nothing  to  the  purpose  to  object  that  the  case 
just  suggested  is  possible  only  under  the  most  singular 
conditions,  and,  if  possible,  is  very  far  from  desirable. 
There  is  not  the  slightest  probability  of  our  seeing  a 
state  of  society  in  which  industry  should  be  solely 
dependent  on  religious,  moral,  or  social  motives.  In- 
dustry and  accumulation  might  possibly  be  diminished 
by  any  sudden  admixture  of  such  motives.  Industry, 
as  a  whole,  might  exist  where  motives  of  self-interest 
were  supplemented,  superseded,  and  controlled  by  a 
range  of  various  motives  in  almost  infinite  proportions. 
We  know  as  a  fact  that  whole  societies  and  races  of 
men  have  pursued  objects  far  less  accordant  with  human 
nature  than  industry,  under  the  influence  of  complex 
motives,  derived  from  many  forms  of  human  character. 
We  know  as  a  fact  that  men  have  given  themselves 
to  industry  under  the  influence  of  every  form  of  it 
alternately,  and  of  many  forms  in  many  combinations. 
It  would  be  as  ridiculous  to  place  industry  on  the 
basis  of  one  special  kind  of  the  egoistic  instincts,  or  on 
all  together,  as  it  would  be  to  make  another  of  them 
the  sole  source  of  religion,  another  of  politics,  another 
of  thought.  Human  action,  of  which  industry  is  but 
a  part,  is  moved  by  the  sum  of  the  human  capacities 
and  instincts ;  and  of  these  such  as  minister  to  personal 
enjoyment  are  not  sole  or  paramount.  Nor  does 
industry  depend  more  on  these  latter  than  human  life 


280   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

itself.  To  hold  it  to  be  inseparable  from  them  is 
possible  only  on  theories  of  human  nature  which 
revive  the  moral  sophisms  of  Hobbes,  or  the  political 
cynicism  of  Machiavelli. 

However  much  these  propositions  may  sound  like 
truisms,  it  may  be  doubted  if  their  full  meaning  is 
present  to  those  who  deal  with  the  labours  of 
Economists,  or  indeed  to  Economists  themselves. 
On  the  contrary,  the  logical  consequences  may  seem 
startling  to  most  of  them.  When,  for  instance,  it  is 
said  to  be  a  law  of  Political  Economy  that  the  rate 
of  wages  depends  on  the  demand  and  supply  of  labour  ; 
that  capitalists  will  seek  to  pay  the  lowest,  and  work- 
men to  obtain  the  highest,  possible  wages  ;  that  capital 
will  seek  the  market  where  there  is  the  greatest  percent- 
age, and  labour  the  market  where  there  is  the  highest 
remuneration, — all  that  is  meant  is,  that  this  will  happen 
where  or  so  long  as  the  love  of  gain,  the  effective  desire 
of  accumulation,  the  desire  of  useful  things,  holds  pre- 
cisely the  same  relative  position  in  the  human  motives 
as  it  does  to-day  in  England  in  the  year  1865. 

The  law  is  gone  the  moment  this  position  is 
changed.  The  law  is  never  in  fact  absolutely  true. 
This  particular  motive  to  labour  varies  as  civilisation 
varies  in  every  conceivable  degree.  It  is  never  per- 
haps wholly  absent.  It  is  never  certainly  exclusively 
dominant.  Perhaps  no  single  case  can  be  found  of 
one  capitalist  or  one  workman  whose  industrial  con- 
duct is  never  influenced  by  some  motive  derived  from 
custom,  public  opinion,  sense  of  duty,  or  benevolence. 
There  have  been  cases  on  the  largest  scale  in  which 
industrial  energy  has  been  influenced  almost  solely  by 
these,  or  one  of  these.  Precisely  as  these  very  variable 
motives  vary  in  efficiency,  industry  will  be  more,  or 
will  be  less,  under  the  impetus  of  competition. 

The    limits    of  variation    in    both    directions   are 


LIMITS  OF  POLITICAL  ECONOMY    281 

almost  incalculable.  We  see  it  in  the  difference  of 
one  age  with  another.  We  see  it  in  the  differences 
of  one  people  with  another.  And  we  see  it  in  the 
differences  of  one  individual  with  another.  If  all 
capitalists  were  as  eager  for  accumulation  as  some 
rare  examples  are  now,  capital  might  be  enormously 
increased.  If  all  capitalists  were  as  little  under  the 
influence  of  acquisitive  motives  as  some  whom  we 
know,  accumulation  might  be  vastly  reduced,  other 
influences  remaining  the  same.  Many  great  employers 
of  labour  (such  as  landed  proprietors)  are  in  a  very 
slight  degree  governed  by  competition  in  the  manage- 
ment of  their  estates.  Many  workmen,  as  agricultural 
labourers,  are  almost  solely  under  the  impulse  of  habit. 
In  parts  of  Europe  men  of  activity  and  intelligence 
are  so  little  under  the  influence  of  competition,  that 
markets  separated  by  a  few  miles  have  widely  different 
prices. 

We  all  know  that  in  many  of  our  daily  dealings 
we  are  very  largely  out  of  its  sphere.  The  wages  of 
the  superior  domestic  servants  are  comparatively  beyond 
it.  In  a  great  many  occupations  (as  in  the  public 
services,  arts,  and  sciences)  the  influence  of  com- 
petition tells  only  very  slowly  and  indirectly.  It 
cannot  therefore  be  the  sole  regulator  there.  In  fact, 
there  is  perhaps  no  single  trade  in  which  the  force  of 
competition,  left  without  restraint,  would  not  diminish 
wages.  It  is  also  certain  that  the  annals  of  the  human 
race  exhibit  competition  as  a  paramount  force  only 
in  certain  parts  of  Europe  in  very  recent  times. 
These  laws,  therefore,  of  political  economy  depend 
on  an  assumption  about  human  character  and  society, 
which  is  totally  untrue  of  the  great  bulk  of  human 
history,  and  not  exactly  true  of  any  single  community 
or  individual  even  now. 

What   is   really  meant   by  saying  that  wages  and 


282   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

profits  follow  such  and  such  a  law,  is  to  state  that 
which  is  an  approximate  generalisation  of  one  par- 
ticular form  of  civilisation.  Of  course  this  can  in  no 
sense  be  a  law  of  human  society.  If  it  were,  it  would 
be  true  of  all  times  and  under  all  conditions.  The 
law  that  the  changes  of  human  life  depend  on  the 
changes  of  human  opinion,  is  true  universally.  It  is 
true  of  the  savage  ;  it  is  true  of  the  child.  It  is  based 
on  a  study  of  human  nature  as  a  whole,  and  of  human 
history  as  a  whole.  But  it  is  obvious  that  most  of  the 
laws  of  Political  Economy  utterly  fail  to  be  realised 
amongst  some  savage  and  some  oriental  races.  Still 
more  signally  do  they  fail  if  applied  to  an  affectionate 
family  or  a  pure  religious  community.  There  the 
assumption  on  which  they  rest  has  no  place. 

The  laws  therefore  are  entirely  relative  to  the 
particular  state  of  civilisation.  Unquestionably,  ap- 
proximate generalisations,  having  strict  reference  to 
a  form  of  society  we  are  studying,  are  of  great  value, 
— but  only  on  the  condition  that  we  never  forget 
their  relative  character.  The  laws  of  political 
economy  are  essentially  abstract  and  hypothetical. 
In  them  man  is  conceived  under  conditions  in  which 
he  is  never  actually  found,  and  which  indeed  could 
not  be  actually  realised  whilst  human  nature  remains 
what  it  is.  Political  Economy  professes  to  exhibit 
man  exclusively  as  a  producing  animal,  which  in  fact 
he  never  is,  and  under  the  influence  of  special  motives, 
by  which  he  is  never  exclusively  actuated.  Social 
institutions  generally,  moral  impulses  altogether,  by 
the  conditions  of  the  subject,  are  excluded.  Other- 
wise Political  Economy  would  be  Social  or  Moral 
Philosophy.  Political  Economy,  therefore,  has  two 
postulates — production  as  the  sole  end,  Competition 
as  the  sole  motive — postulates  of  which  the  human 
race  and  its  history  can  show  no  actual  example. 


LIMITS  OF  POLITICAL  ECONOMY    283 

Without  doubt  this  may  be  no  obstacle  to  the 
great  value  of  these  theories  to  the  student.  The 
intellectual  or  the  moral  forces  might  be  similarly 
studied.  But  the  great,  indeed  the  sole  value  of 
these  special  studies,  depends  on  their  relative  char- 
acter being  constantly  kept  in  view.  It  may  be 
asserted,  and  is  no  doubt  true,  that  many  spheres  of 
industry  are  so  far  under  the  rule  of  Competition  that 
it  may  practically  be  said  to  regulate  them.  Broad 
generalisations  may  fairly  be  based  on  what  is  the 
efficient  rule.  It  may  be  said  also  that  this  rule  of 
Competition  is  the  best,  the  most  perfect  condition  of 
society,  essential  to  the  ultimate  happiness  of  mankind, 
and  destined  to  be  developed  indefinitely  in  the  future. 
It  may  be.  But  this  is  precisely  the  question  which 
no  economist,  as  such,  is  able  to  decide.  Both  these 
assumptions  are  vital  problems  in  the  general  philosophy 
of  society.  This  and  this  alone  can  offer  a  reasonable 
answer. 

The  economist  may  be  able  to  decide  what  is  the 
law  of  civilisation,  what  is  the  destiny  of  society,  what 
are  the  conditions  of  happiness,  provided  he  has  satis- 
fied his  mind  on  the  theory  of  society,  of  history,  of 
morals — of  human  nature  as  a  whole  and  human  society 
as  a  whole, — provided  he  be  a  social  philosopher,  but 
only  thus.  The  economist  may  be  able  to  judge  to 
what  degree  in  a  particular  society  competition  is  a 
dominant  motive  j  where  it  is,  where  it  is  not  para- 
mount ;  how  far  it  is  interwoven  with  social  institu- 
tions ;  what  in  each  case  is  its  relative  importance 
as  compared  with  other  influences — provided  he  has 
analysed  society  as  well  as  industry,  and  has  traced 
the  manifold  ramifications  of  human  activity — pro- 
vided he  be  a  politician  and  a  moralist  as  well  as  an 
economist,  but  scarcely  otherwise.  Without  this 
knowledge  his  subject-matter  will  be  liable  to  varia- 


284  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

tions  which  he  not  only  cannot  explain,  but  which  he 
cannot  detect.  He  is  working  out  problems  depending 
on  unknown  quantities  which  are  constantly  varying 
in  relative  value.  None  of  his  terms  are  constants  or 
have  a  fixed  power,  but  they  sometimes  represent  one, 
and  sometimes  another ;  and  he  has  no  means  of 
ascertaining  when  this  power  is  changed. 

It  is  essential  to  remember  that  in  these  industrial 
problems  the  unknown  quantities  are  never  constant, 
never  regular,  and  never  calculable  by  the  economist 
as  such.  He  cannot  give  his  solutions  in  terms  of  his 
data,  leaving  his  unknown  quantities  for  after  investi- 
gation. Throughout  every  stage  of  his  calculations 
new  quantities  may  appear,  which  may,  or  may  not, 
affect  the  result.  A  man  may  sit  down  and  calculate 
the  law  of  some  branch  of  industry  ;  he  may  tabulate 
laboriously  the  data  of  a  certain  place  or  time  where 
the  rule  of  competition  was  almost  paramount,  and 
then  deduce  an  approximate  result  in  relation  to  these 
data.  The  tone  of  civilisation,  we  may  suppose,  is 
changed  ;  a  new  set  of  ideas,  habits,  and  principles  is 
introduced  (matters  wholly  beyond  the  range  of  the 
economist) — the  law  altogether  vanishes.  When  this 
change  occurs,  why  it  occurs,  what  is  its  result,  are 
questions  to  which  the  economist  has  no  clue  what- 
ever. Yet  without  it  his  reasoning  is  a  mere  exercise 
in  logic.  To  give  it  scientific  truth  or  practical  value 
he  must  have  some  general  conceptions  about  the 
unknown  quantities — religious,  moral,  social  ideals — • 
about  the  other  motives  of  human  character  and  forms 
of  human  life.  In  short,  he  must  be  guided  by  refer- 
ence to  civilisation  as  a  whole.  In  other  words, 
economic  researches  have  neither  use  nor  reality,  save 
as  they  are  guided  by  social  philosophy. 


LIMITS  OF  POLITICAL  ECONOMY    285 


II 

This  brings  us  to  the  objections  which  Mr.  Mill 
has  urged  to  the  strictures  of  Comte  upon  political 
economy.  He  insists  that  economic  studies  can  be 
perfectly  well  carried  on  separately ;  that  science  has 
been  largely  aided  by  independent  investigations  into  a 
particular  class  of  phenomena,  and  by  abstract  reason- 
ing about  a  special  order  of  conceptions.  He  quotes, 
with  approval,  M.  Littr^'s  (or  rather  M.  Comte's) 
admirable  analogy  of  the  industrial  phenomena  of 
society  to  the  nutritive  functions  in  biology.  He  tells 
us  that  as  the  science  of  life  has  been  largely  promoted 
by  the  study  of  nutrition,  hypothetically  conceived  as 
independent,  so  the  science  of  society  may  be  greatly 
advanced  by  the  study  of  production  conceived  in  the 
abstract  apart.  Now,  without  defending  the  attacks 
of  Comte  upon  economists  in  general  (attacks  founded 
on  social  rather  than  intellectual  grounds,  on  their 
popular  influence  rather  than  their  logical  errors),  the 
answer  of  the  disciples  of  Comte  would  be  something 
of  this  kind :  Economic  researches  may  to  a  great 
extent  be  carried  on  independently,  but  only  as  a 
branch  of  social  philosophy,  and  therefore  not  by  mere 
economists. 

So  far  as  a  general  theory  of  society  requires  the 
laws  of  production  to  be  analysed  apart,  so  far  the 
economic  laws  are  a  separate  branch  of  thought. 
What  positivism  would  condemn  would  be,  that  mere 
statisticians,  without  any  fixed  notion  of  social  laws, 
and  without  any  reference  to  their  paramount  effect, 
should  create  a  body  of  isolated  generalisations.  Comte 
never  condemned  the  use  of  abstract  methods  and  sus- 
tained hypotheses  in  investigating  the  laws  of  produc- 
tion by  themselves — on  the  contrary,  he  largely  uses 


286   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

these  methods  himself;  but  he  would  insist  that  it 
should  be  done  as  a  branch  of  the  superior  science  of 
society.  If  economists  were  not  all  actually  social 
philosophers,  the  least  that  would  be  required  of  them 
would  be  a  very  clear  and  strict  notion  of  the  limits, 
the  relativity,  and  the  subordination  of  their  study! 

The  analogy  of  M.  Littre  is  beautifully  just. 
Unquestionably  the  nutritive  functions  can  be  in- 
vestigated separately  in  biology ;  but  only  by  a 
biologist,  and  only  as  bearing  on  the  science  of 
biology.  What  would  happen  if  nutrition  were  to 
be  dealt  with  by  men  wholly  ignorant  of  the  other 
functions  of  life,  who  hardly  believed  that  they  were 
capable  of  scientific  treatment  ?  Precisely  what  has 
happened  when  statisticians  attempted  to  solve  the 
problems  of  production.  When  biology  was  struggling 
into  life  as  a  science,  there  were  just  such  a  set  of 
specialists,  and  the  chemical  theory  of  nutrition  was 
the  result.  The  views  of  the  pure  economist  are 
precisely  such  a  chemical  explanation  of  the  nutrition 
of  society.  Conceive  a  science  of  the  Stomach  !  And 
a  science  of  the  stomach  created  by  men  who  rather 
doubted  whether  there  was  such  a  thing  as  a  nervous 
system,  men  who  had  vague  ideas  about  the  circu- 
lation of  the  blood  !  The  theory  of  digestion  can 
be  roughly  sketched  without  much  reference  to  the 
general  system  of  life ;  so  can  the  theory  of  pro- 
duction be  sketched  apart  from  the  general  social 
conditions.  The  chemical  and  mechanical  processes 
in  digestion  may  be  analysed  and  reduced  to  a  system  ; 
as  may  also  their  chemical  and  mechanical  results. 
They  can  be  even  reproduced  and  imitated  partially. 

The  laws  of  production  can  likewise  be  systema- 
tised  so  far  as  they  depend  on  the  simple  rule  of  com- 
petition, and  their  results  may  be  systematised  so  far 
as  this  rule  can  be  supposed  universal.  But  this 


LIMITS  OF  POLITICAL  ECONOMY    287 

economic  theory  is  not  the  true  theory  of  production 
any  more  than  the  chemical  is  the  true  theory  of 
digestion.  Digestion  never  in  the  living  frame  takes 
place  in  purely  chemical  ways,  and  production  never 
in  the  living  society  takes  place  under  the  sovereign 
rule  of  Competition.  A  theory  of  digestion  and  of 
nutrition  we  may  have,  but  only  when  the  theories  of 
the  nervous,  the  vascular,  and  the  glandular  systems 
are  complete  ;  only  from  men  who  can  grasp  and  trace 
the  complex  combination  of  all  in  compound  pro- 
cesses ;  who  have  watched  the  action  of  nerves  on 
secretions,  of  blood  on  nerves,  of  gases  upon  blood  ; 
who  know  how  fibre  is  added  to  fibre,  how  laminae  of 
bone  are  deposited  around  their  centres ;  who  can 
conceive  the  living  organism  j  who  know  life  as  a 
whole. 

Once,  in  the  infancy  of  thought,  men  poring  over 
a  few  dry  bones  may  have  fancied  they  could  build  up 
out  of  them  at  least  a  theory  of  the  skeleton  by  itself. 
They  little  thought  that  no  rational  osteology  could 
exist  until  a  theory  of  the  blood  had  been  mechanic- 
ally, chemically,  and  biologically  established.  So 
too,  men,  in  some  charnel  houses  of  society,  have 
built  up  out  of  the  dry  bones  of  the  social  organism  a 
crude  theory  of  production  on  the  mechanical  basis  or 
Competition.  A  true  theory  of  production  we  may 
have  one  day  ;  but  only  on  the  completion  of  the 
various  constituents  of  the  social  science  ;  when  the 
play  of  human  motives  and  the  order  of  the  human 
instincts  is  definitely  solved ;  when  the  Social 
Organism  is  known  as  a  whole,  and  is  felt  to  have  a 
single  and  intelligible  life. 

Mr.  Mill's  great  work  itself  is  a  cardinal  proof  that 
if  the  facts  of  production  can  be  separately  analysed,  it 
must  be  by  the  guidance  and  aid  of  a  social  philosophy. 
He  is  not  an  economist,  but  a  social  philosopher ;  and 


288   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

his  Political  Economy  is  simply  a  branch  of  his 
general  system  of  Society.  A  large  portion  of  his 
treatise  is  occupied  with  reasonings  which  are  strictly 
political ;  and  there  are  no  portions  more  impressive 
than  those  which  are  strictly  moral.  His  views  rest 
upon  doctrines  respecting  human  character  and  institu- 
tions which  he  has  systematically  expounded  in  all 
their  leading  branches.  His  theory  of  industry  is 
scarcely  conceivable  by  one  who  has  not  mastered  his 
general  theory  of  life.  He  is  far  from  confining  his 
view  to  the  actual  forms  of  industry.  Production,  as 
he  conceives  it,  would  rest  on  social  and  moral  changes 
vaster  than  those  which  separate  the  middle  ages 
from  ourselves. 

It  is  hardly  recognised  yet  how  grand  a  transfor- 
mation of  society  underlies  these  apparent  economic 
theories.  There  are  two  great  questions  which  so 
pervade  all  industry  that  there  is  scarcely  an  economic 
problem  into  which  they  do  not  vitally  enter.  These 
are  Population  and  Immovable  Property.  How  far 
do  economists  and  the  public  adopt  the  theories  of 
Mr.  Mill  on  Reproductive  Abstinence  ?  Yet  it  lies 
at  the  root  of  all  his  doctrines  on  Industry.  What 
economist  and  what  politician  accepts  his  view  that 
landed  property  in  England  is  far  from  fulfilling  the 
conditions  which  render  its  existence  economically 
justifiable,  and  that  in  Ireland  it  does  not  do  so  at  all  ? 
Yet  the  value  of  a  great  part  of  his  industrial  laws 
depends  on  this,  which  rests  on  an  axiom  in  the 
general  theory  of  social  life.  Mr.  Mill's  speculations 
on  population  and  landed  property  are  important 
chiefly  because  they  rest  on  profound  moral  and  social 
truths.  But  what  would  be  the  value  of  the  specula- 
tions of  a  mere  statistician  who  had  no  such  guide 
and  no  such  preparation  ?  And  who  among  statis- 
ticians has  ? 


LIMITS  OF  POLITICAL  ECONOMY    289 

There  exists  an  entire  literature  on  the  subject  of 
population,  from  which  moral  causes  are  as  effectually 
excluded  as  if  Man  were  a  form  of  aphis.  But  moral 
causes  are  almost  decisive  in  questions  of  population. 
Theoretically,  the  population  of  the  world  in  a  few 
generations  of  unlimited  breeding  could  stretch  from 
the  earth  to  the  moon.  Theoretically,  if  the  human 
race  was  in  the  religious  condition  of  St.  Bernard,  it 
might  cease  with  the  actual  generation.  Every  varia- 
tion in  population  between  these  scarcely  conceivable 
limits  is  due  to  moral,  political,  and  social  circum- 
stances, and  in  a  very  minor  degree  to  physical.  Yet 
these  variations  are  our  important  data.  The  effect 
of  population  is  the  one  cardinal  quantity  in  every 
economic  problem.  What  then  is  the  rationality 
of  economic  problems  without  a  general  theory  of 
population  ?  But  a  theory  of  population  is  essen- 
tially a  domestic  question.  It  is  vitally  a  question 
about  Family.  The  form  of  marriage,  the  position 
of  women,  the  moral  duties  of  the  pair,  purity, 
continence,  are  certainly  the  primary  theories  to  be 
established.  Without  these,  theories  of  population 
may  be  constructed  in  the  abstract ;  but  they  cannot 
have  much  practical  utility.  Theories  of  locomotion 
might  be  constructed  in  the  abstract ;  but  they  would 
not  carry  us  far  if  the  theorist  paid  no  attention  to  the 
fact  that  the  medium  of  motion  might  be  either  earth, 
air,  or  water. 

Few  economic  problems  have  been  more  debated, 
or  are  more  important,  than  that  of  the  cultivation  of 
land.  The  systems  of  peasant  proprietors,  of  land- 
lords, of  farmers,  of  metayers,  of  cottiers,  form  a 
singular  instance  of  a  ground  where  economists  con- 
tradict each  other  not  only  in  their  conclusions,  but 
as  to  the  facts  from  which  they  reason.  But  there  is 
a  question  which  underlies  the  whole  problem,  which 


290    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

is  the  social  ground  of  property  and  the  appropriation 
of  land.  No  one  does,  no  one  can  treat  this  funda- 
mental political  principle  as  a  purely  economic  ques- 
tion. The  first  thing  a  rational  philosophy  has  to  do 
is  to  establish  the  basis  of  Property  ;  the  rights,  the 
duties,  the  relations  of  proprietors  ;  the  political,  social, 
and  moral  functions  which  ownership  in  land  implies. 
Before  this  is  done,  or  at  least  unless  this  is  done  also, 
what  is  the  use  of  the  mere  economic  side  of  the 
question  ?  It  is,  as  we  have  said,  the  mere  digestive 
side  of  an  organic  problem  of  health.  Economists 
have  pretty  well  proved  that  a  very  good  cultivation  is 
attainable  economically  under  any  of  the  land  systems. 
They  recommend  one  rather  than  another  for  political, 
social,  and  moral  reasons.  A  large  portion  of  Mr. 
Mill's  treatise,  at  any  rate,  is  thus  occupied.  But  it 
would  not  be  of  the  slightest  value  unless  he  were  at 
the  same  time  a  profound  student  of  political,  social, 
and  moral  truth. 

When  it  is  said  that  the  rule  of  competition  and 
self-interest  is  so  far  practically  the  rule  of  modern 
society  as  to  be  a  sufficient  basis  for  economic  laws,  it 
may  fairly  be  asked  if  these  two  great  elements  of 
Population  and  Property  —  one  of  them  dependent 
mainly  on  moral  standards,  the  other  on  political 
institutions — do  not  radically  affect  every  problem  in 
turn.  Every  other  element  of  economy  may  be 
shown  to  be  largely  under  the  influence  of  some 
moral  or  some  social  force.  But  the  economist 
excludes  these  from  his  inquiries.  What  he  does, 
therefore,  is  to  isolate  for  study  a  special  class  of 
complex  phenomena,  and  then  to  isolate  for  his 
explanation  of  them  a  special  class  of  the  conditions 
on  which  they  depend.  The  relative  force  of  the 
other  phenomena,  and  that  of  the  other  conditions  of 
all  the  phenomena,  remain  all  the  time  variable  but 


LIMITS  OF  POLITICAL  ECONOMY    291 

unknown.  To  assume  that  they  are  fixed,  to  assume 
them  of  a  certain  force,  to  assume  them  to  be  small,  is 
simply  to  assume  the  problems  which  lie  at  the  root 
of  human  society.  The  economist  has  not  only  a 
special  class  of  facts  to  deal  with,  but  he  has  to  refer 
these  to  a  special  class  of  causes.  An  astronomer 
might  find  it  convenient  to  work  out  the  law  of  the 
centrifugal  tendency  of  the  earth  ;  but  a  mere  calculator 
could  do  nothing  of  the  kind.  And  assuredly  the 
astronomer  would  not  do  so  unless  the  centripetal 
tendency  were  a  known  or  certainly  a  fixed  force. 

When,  therefore,  the  economist  lays  down  a  law 
respecting  wages,  for  instance,  based  on  modern 
civilisation  and  competition,  or  on  anything  but  laws 
of  human  character  and  society,  what  he  does  comes 
to  this  :  He  states  a  proposition  about  human  action 
which  can  only  apply  to  states  of  society  with  habits 
and  institutions  exactly  like  that  before  him,  and 
which  would  be  true  of  that  particular  state  of  society 
if  mankind  acted  upon  certain  special  motives,  which 
they  never  exclusively  do.  Truly  a  somewhat  condi- 
tional and  hypothetical  law  !  Very  useful  possibly  to 
the  social  inquirer,  but  of  small  value  to  the  man  of 
business.  A  powerful  and  universal  moral  stimulus 
might,  it  is  conceivable,  dispose  all  capitalists  to  give 
just  the  same  labour  and  care  to  their  business  as  they 
do,  and  yet  consume  of  the  profits  no  more  than  a 
common  labourer.  They  could  then,  if  they  pleased, 
increase  the  wages  of  labour  largely,  population  under 
moral  restraint  not  increasing.  A  powerful  and 
universal  political  stimulus  might  also  dispose  all 
labourers  to  force  them  to  do  so,  and,  in  fact,  make 
the  capitalists  the  serfs  of  the  labourers.  In  either  of 
these  cases,  and  they  may  be  approached  in  infinite 
degrees,  the  law  of  wages  would  cease  to  apply.  Nor 
can  the  economist  give  us  the  slightest  test  as  to 


292    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

when  this  tendency  might  begin,  what  would  cause  it, 
what  could  stop  it — whether  it  is  good  or  bad,  whether 
it  is  general  or  partial.  All  that  he  can  give  us  is 
the  following  : — The  actual  rate  of  wages  now  and 
formerly,  some  of  the  causes  on  which  they  depend 
(value  unknown),  and  what  wages  would  tend  to  be  if 
something  happened  which  never  happens. 

It  is  quite  true  that  there  is  a  certain  order  of 
industrial  questions  which  are  in  no  degree  affected 
by  variation  of  motive.  The  purely  physical  analysis 
of  capital,  labour,  production,  and  accumulation  is  true 
of  every  body  of  men  in  all  ages,  of  a  single  family, 
and  of  a  horde  of  savages.  These  are  the  fundamental 
conditions  of  all  material  efforts,  and  are  closely 
dependent  on  physical  truths.  These,  therefore,  are 
true  laws  of  society.  So  far  political  economy  is  a 
branch  of  an  independent  and  a  real  science.  But  no 
farther.  Such  laws  as  are  wholly  free  from  the  influ- 
ence of  moral  causes  can  be  exactly  stated  whilst  the 
moral  forces  are  unknown.  Such  laws  as  refer  to 
subjects  which  are  affected  by  moral  causes  (the  influ- 
ence of  these  being  unknown  or  neglected)  can  be 
nothing  but  hypothetical.  But  these  true  laws  of 
production  are  very  few  and  very  general.  They  are 
rather  the  axioms  and  conditions  of  the  study  than  the 
theorems.  They  occupy  in  Mr.  Mill's  treatise  only 
about  one-third  of  the  first  volume.  They  are  of  deep 
interest  to  all  who  think  about  society,  but  they  are 
general  philosophic  analyses,  which  are  of  small  prac- 
tical value,  and  are  scarcely  understood  by  the  public. 
These  are  not  the  economic  laws  to  which  men  appeal 
as  the  true  guide  of  life.  The  Political  Economy 
which  really  acts  upon  men's  minds  is  the  Economy 
which  is  concerned  with  Distribution.  It  is  the 
laws  of  Distribution  which  men  seek  to  know  and 
to  enforce.  But  into  all  of  these  the  moral  and  the 


LIMITS  OF  POLITICAL  ECONOMY    293 

social  forces,  motives,  institutions,  habits,  invariably 
enter.  To  the  economist,  therefore,  the  laws  of 
Distribution  are  purely  hypothetical,  and  consequently 
have  a  theoretic  but  no  direct  practical  value. 


Ill 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  define  the  limits 
within  which  political  economy  can  be  pursued  as  an 
independent  study.  In  the  first  place,  so  far  as 
physical  conditions  go,  and  up  to  the  point  where 
moral  conditions  begin,  strict  scientific  laws  can  be 
established.  These  answer  exactly  to  the  chemical 
conditions  which  limit  the  study  of  the  nutritive 
functions,  or  the  mechanical  conditions  which  govern 
the  laws  of  gravitation  in  physics.  But  even  here  it 
must  be  remembered  that  the  value  of  these  economic 
laws  depends  on  the  truth  of  the  physical  premises. 
The  economist  will  be  unable  even  to  analyse  the 
formation  of  capital,  or  the  results  of  labour,  or  the 
conservation  of  wealth,  unless  he  have  the  requisite 
knowledge  of  physics,  of  vegetable,  of  animal  life. 
Directly  the  data  of  the  study  become  affected  by 
moral  conditions,  the  conclusions  of  the  economist  as 
such  cease  to  be  scientific  laws,  and  are  only  hypo- 
theses. Whether  these  hypotheses  approach  reality, 
whether  they  can  be  of  the  slightest  use,  can  only  be 
determined  by  a  systematic  study  of  the  moral  condi- 
tions. That  is  to  say,  the  test  of  the  rationality  of 
these  speculations  is  that  they  be  relative  to  social 
science.  They  may  be  carried  on  independently  to 
any  extent  which  this  science  may  require,  but  they 
can  only  be  carried  on  reasonably  under  its  constant 
guidance.  It  must  be  done,  as  Aristotle  would  say,  <5s 
>}  TroAiTuay  Troirycrete  KOL  TroAiriKws.  It  is  legitimate  in  the 


hands  of  the  social  philosopher  for  the  purposes  of 
social  science. 

Under  these  conditions  it  is  of  great  importance 
that  these  speculations  should  be  produced.  But 
being  hypotheses,  they  are  of  no  practical  application. 
To  pass  from  true  abstract  laws  of  society  to  practical 
injunctions  is  the  most  arduous  task  of  the  intellect. 
To  pass  to  them  from  limited  hypotheses  would  be 
raving  madness.  Every  science  uses  such  abstract 
fictions  with  advantage  ;  but  it  never  applies  them  to 
practice.  A  physiologist  might  find  it  desirable  to 
consider  the  body  from  the  stomachic  point  of  view  ; 
to  throw  aside  all  organs  but  one,  and  to  conceive  the 
human  frame  as  a  simple  belly.  But  his  labours 
would  have  little  practical  use  except  to  a  community 
of  Amoebae.  In  early  stages  of  a  science  these 
fictions  are  wonderfully  suggestive,  as  were  the  cir- 
cular hypotheses  of  planetary  movements,  and  the 
historical  cycles  of  Vico.  In  the  maturity  of  a 
science  they  are  powerful  instruments  of  reasoning, 
as  the  hypotheses  of  variation  in  the  theory  of  develop- 
ment. But  until  the  other  branches  of  the  science 
are  similarly  advanced,  and  the  rest  of  the  conditions 
equally  understood,  their  value  is  altogether  doubtful. 
To  pursue  them  by  themselves  is  mere  waste  of  time  ; 
to  systematise  them  apart  is  pedantry ;  to  promul- 
gate them  as  realities  is  a  crime.  The  business  of 
the  specialist  is  with  facts,  not  with  hypotheses.  If 
he  thinks  that  good  can  come  from  the  crude  regis- 
tration of  phenomena,  from  practising  imaginary 
calculations  on  fragmentary  data,  let  him  be  careful 
that  no  man  look  on  these  undigested  tables  as  true 
generalisations ;  that  society  be  not  poisoned  by 
mistaking  his  idle  hypotheses  for  absolute  laws. 

There  is  another  condition  which  it  is  essential  to 
remember.  The  higher  the  nature  of  the  subject,  the 


LIMITS  OF  POLITICAL  ECONOMY    295 

more  complex  it  is.  The  facts  of  society  are,  there- 
fore, more  closely  interwoven  and  dependent  on  each 
other  than  any  other  facts.  The  abstractions  which 
are  easy  in  astronomy  are  less  so  in  chemistry ;  they 
become  difficult  in  biology  ;  they  are  often  impossible 
in  sociology.  The  ramifications  of  society  are  more 
intricate  by  far  than  those  of  the  body,  the  multi- 
plicity more  wondrous,  the  balance  of  functions  more 
delicate.  Strange  as  is  the  harmony  of  the  physical 
organism  throughout  every  organ  and  system  down  to 
the  microscopic  cell  or  nerve-fibre—making  all  one 
life — it  is  nothing  to  the  unity  of  the  social  organism 
in  its  infinity,  its  sympathy,  its  variety ;  wherein 
each  individual  soul,  each  individual  fibre  of  each 
soul,  takes  and  gives  its  share  in  the  common  being. 

There  is  a  second  consequence.  The  more  com- 
plex are  the  phenomena  the  more  they  are  modifiable. 
And  of  all,  the  most  modifiable  are  the  social.  The 
variations  of  society  in  the  past  seem  infinite.  They 
are  no  less  infinite  in  the  future.  There  is  no  institu- 
tution  and  no  instinct  which  has  not  varied  vastly  in 
influence,  in  form,  and  in  relative  importance.  Every 
variation  in  each  institution  and  in  each  instinct  tells 
upon  the  whole  society.  Each  variation  of  the  whole 
society  tells  upon  each  institution,  and  each  instinct. 
The  possible  combinations  are  simply  infinite.  When, 
therefore,  we  isolate  for  study  one  institution  or  one 
instinct,  or  a  set  of  institutions  and  instincts,  in  the 
midst  of  this  complex  variable  whole,  we  are  dealing 
with  one  combination  where  the  possible  combinations 
are  countless ;  we  are  working  out  problems  with  the 
knowledge  of  a  perturbation  in  our  subject,  where  the 
perturbations  are  known  to  be  infinite  in  number  and 
in  force.  So  a  worm  might  study  the  influence  of 
climate  on  vegetation  ! 

Now  it  is  this  amazing   interdependence   of  the 


296    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

social  forces  on  each  other,  and  their  no  less  amazing 
capacity  for  adaptation,  which  the  popular  conception 
of  Political  Economy  most  completely  misconceives. 
Amidst  forces  and  conditions  infinite,  the  effect  of  one 
on  the  whole  is  never  paramount.  Each  force  may 
be  stimulated,  neutralised,  modified  to  an  indefinite 
extent.  Very  similar  results  may  follow  from  very 
different  conditions.  Almost  similar  conditions  may 
lead  to  widely  different  results.  The  thing  has  been 
done  constantly  in  politics.  In  this  age,  the  satur- 
nalia of  specialists,  pedants  are  continually  giving  us 
theories  of  the  effect  of  this  or  that  institution,  and 
show  how  the  welfare  of  nations  depends  on  a  repre- 
sentative chamber  or  a  free  press  or  adult  suffrage. 
We  are  getting  to  feel  that  the  welfare  of  nations 
depends  on  a  healthy  social  system  which  is  the  sum 
of  a  multitude  of  moral  and  social  forces.  We  have 
yet  to  learn  that  the  wealth  of  nations  itself  depends 
on  a  similar  aggregate. 

It  might  be  possible  and  useful  (in  reason)  to  work 
out  a  theory  of  several  special  instincts.  The  de- 
structive instinct  has  been  in  some  ages  more  entirely 
universal,  more  dominant,  and  more  independent  per- 
haps, than  any  other.  There  have  been  ages  when  a 
man  might  possibly  have  thought  that  the  business  of 
Destruction  was  so  nearly  identical  with  human  activity, 
and  the  instinct  of  Destruction  so  far  paramount,  that 
no  other  was  worth  considering.  We  can  imagine  a 
science  of  Destruction,  or  the  laws  by  which  men  did, 
do,  and  must  destroy  each  other,  based  on  the  assump- 
tion that  man  acts  exclusively  on  the  destructive 
instinct.  This  science,  its  laws  and  its  postulates, 
would  have  been  more  real  in  early  Rome  or  at  least 
in  modern  Dahomey,  than  the  science  of  Production 
on  the  postulate  of  the  selfish  instinct  is  now  in 
Europe.  The  obvious  objection  to  such  speculations 


LIMITS  OF  POLITICAL  ECONOMY    297 

would  be  that  man  had  so  many  other  capacities  and 
instincts  besides  those  of  destruction,  and  that  again 
destruction  itself  called  out  so  many  other  capacities 
and  instincts  beside  the  destructive,  and  that  all  these 
so  crossed  and  modified  each  other,  and  made  up  one 
human  life,  depending  on  one  human  character,  that 
the  speculation  was  utterly  chimerical,  not  to  say 
demoralising.  Production  is  far  more  reasonable  than 
Destruction,  and  the  desire  of  getting  material  comfort 
is,  perhaps,  superior  to  that  of  destroying  one's  fellows; 
but  the  scientific  error  of  singling  these  out  of  human 
life  and  motives  is  almost  as  great,  and  only  less  debasing. 
Mr.  Mill  protests  against  economists  being  made 
liable  for  the  belief  that  the  facts  of  production  are  not 
in  human  control.  No  man  certainly  could  think  of 
suggesting  that  he  was  liable  to  the  charge — he,  to 
whom  England  largely  owes  the  true  conception  of 
sbcial  laws.  To  Mr.  Mill  we  owe  the  knowledge 
that  the  facts  of  society  are  more  modifiable  than  any 
other,  and  are  so  precisely  in  the  degree  in  which  we 
know  their  laws.  Nor  in  any  line  of  his  writing  is 
this  truth  forgotten.  But  it  may  fairly  be  asked  if 
economists  as  a  body  adopt  this  view ;  if  any  one  of 
them  conceives  it  as  constantly  and  fully  as  he  does. 
Unquestionably  this  is  not  the  notion  of  the  public. 
In  newspapers,  pamphlets,  parliament,  and  conversa- 
tion, it  is  repeated  continually  in  a  confused  and 
uncertain  form,  that  the  facts  of  production  and 
accumulation  are  beyond  human  control.  It  is  not 
meant  by  this  to  point  to  the  limiting  conditions  of 
all  production,  but  the  special  modes  of  distribution. 
Let  these  ignorant  workmen  be  told,  we  often  hear, 
that  wages  and  profits  depend  on  immutable  laws,  and 
cannot  be  varied  at  the  will  of  employer  or  em- 
ployed. Wages,  profits,  population,  consumption,  and 
accumulation,  every  branch  of  economy  in  turn,  is 


298  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

treated  by  the  public  as  if  fixed  by  nature  in  permanent 
proportions. 

Within  their  own  vast  limits  they  are  variable  to 
any  extent.  Change  the  ideas,  the  moral  tone,  the 
habits,  and  all  is  changed.  Yet  this  degrading 
fatalism  (as  false  and  as  deadening  as  Calvinism  itself) 
is  seized  by  a  materialist  generation  as  an  excuse  for 
giving  free  scope  to  its  greed,  just  as  it  is  seized  by 
orientals  as  an  excuse  for  indulging  their  sloth.  It 
may  be  that  Economists  as  a  body  have  never  propa- 
gated this  monstrous  paradox ;  but  some  of  them 
distinctly  have  fallen  into  it,  and  as  a  body  they  have 
stood  by  and  have  never  raised  their  voices  against 
this  general  perversion  of  their  teaching.  If  they 
have  not  taught  it,  they  have  countenanced  it  by 
silence.  Their  teaching  gave  birth  to  this  delusion  j 
it  was  theirs  to  dispel  it.  None  of  them  have  done  so 
but  Mr.  Mill  and  some  of  his  followers,  and  that 
because  they  are  not  mere  Economists. 

It  may  fairly  be  asked  if  the  fact  of  an  elaborate 
system  of  economic  laws,  based  on  partial  data,  is  not 
itself  a  proof  that  whatever  they  professed,  the  econo- 
mists believed  very  little  in  the  voluntary  modifiability 
of  society.  What  is  the  use  of  a  vast  body  of  general- 
isations based  on  a  special  set  of  conditions,  where  the 
conditions  may  vary  indefinitely  ?  The  number  of 
such  possible  bodies  of  laws  is  infinite.  There  may 
be  a  million  systems  of  Political  Economy  besides  the 
one  we  have  got,  all  just  as  true  if  we  allow  their 
data.  What  is  the  use  of  one  more  than  another, 
unless  we  suppose  some  one  of  the  sets  of  conditions 
permanent  ?  The  actual  economic  laws  are  certainly 
not  true  now,  never  can  be  true,  and  in  the  progress 
of  civilisation  may  become  less  and  less  true  indefinitely. 
Let  it  be  supposed,  however,  that  they  bear  some 
relation  to  an  actual  state  of  society.  But  what  if 


LIMITS  OF  POLITICAL  ECONOMY    299 

the  actual  state  of  society  changes,  what  is  the  good 
of  them  then  ?  We  should  want  another  set  in  rela- 
tion to  that  change,  and  so  on.  Every  social  system 
might  have  its  own  economic  laws. 

The  Socialists,  the  Communists,  the  Mormons, 
nay,  the  cannibals,  not  to  speak  of  every  social  system 
in  history  and  throughout  the  world,  might  have  its 
own  economic  laws.  The  Economists  have  absolutely 
no  scientific  answer  to  Communism.  They  take  one 
special  instinct  ;  Communism  takes  another.  Every 
social  state  that  ever  existed,  or  that  could  exist  (and 
they  are  infinite),  might  have  its  own  economic  laws 
appropriate  to  its  conditions.  In  a  religious  fraternity 
the  postulate  would  be  the  love  of  God,  and  the  only 
Competition  would  be  to  get  the  least  wages  and  the 
least  profits.  What,  then,  is  the  use  of  an  elaborate 
body  of  deductions,  until  we  have  agreed  on  the 
conditions  from  which  they  follow  ?  These  deduc- 
tions, that  is  to  say,  the  economic  principles,  do  not 
directly  affect  the  conditions — that  is  to  say,  the  social 
state  ;  but  it  directly  affects  them.  When  we  have 
got  the  social  state  we  want,  or  at  least  conceive  it  as 
a  whole,  then  we  can  build  up  useful  deductions  from 
it.  To  build  the  deductions  on  any  conditions  is  to 
assume  them  more  or  less  permanent.  Yet  all  reason- 
able social  inquiry  now  proceeds  on  the  ground  that  the 
social  state  requires  much  improvement.  That  which 
can  improve  it  must  be  something  which  affects  the 
social  state,  and  this  Economic  deductions  do  not,  or 
do  most  superficially.  Political  Economy,  therefore, 
as  an  elaborate  body  of  practical  principles,  rests  on 
the  assumption  that  the  social  state  is  practically  not 
capable  of  improvement.  Directly  it  is  improved, 
new  Economic  principles  will  be  needed. 

A  school  of  thinkers,  with  an  entire  literature,  and 
vast  social  and  political  influence  like  that  of  the 


3oo  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Political  Economists,  must  be  held  responsible  for  the 
social  and  popular  results  of  their  teaching.  A  body 
of  political  writers  who  undertook  to  systematise  the 
laws  of  government  on  the  assumption  that  men  crave 
only  for  place  and  power,  and  who  rigidly  excluded 
from  their  view  questions  of  religion,  education, 
morality,  society,  and  industry — who  confined  their 
views  to  the  Georgian  period  of  the  British  constitu- 
tion, and  neglected  all  history,  and  all  the  rest  of 
mankind — might  construct  a  science  of  the  British 
Constitution,  and  a  number  of  hypothetical  laws  of 
politics,  including  the  laws  of  rotten  boroughs,  of 
bribery,  patronage,  and  place-hunting  ;  they  might 
give  us  calculations  of  the  bribes  that  must  be  given 
and  the  jobs  which  must  be  perpetrated  (hypothetically), 
and  how  a  seat  in  parliament  depended  on  the  number 
of  voters  to  be  purchased  compared  with  the  length  of 
the  candidate's  purse.  But  such  men  could  hardly 
complain  if  they  were  accused  of  lowering  rather  than 
elevating  political  morality,  of  systematising  corruption, 
and  reducing  venality  to  a  science.  It  is  in  social 
and  moral  affairs  that  this  partial  method  of  inquiry  is 
so  frightfully  dangerous.  Moral  systems  on  narrow 
bases  have  constantly  depraved  an  entire  generation. 

We  know  the  disastrous  effects  which  moral 
theories  of  the  supremacy  of  the  selfish  instincts  have 
at  times  exercised  on  society.  Yet  Political  Economy 
has,  as  its  postulate,  not  the  predominance  merely, 
but  the  exclusive  supremacy,  of  one  of  the  selfish 
instincts.  There  was  once  a  very  remarkable  instance. 
One  of  the  acutest  of  men,  Machiavelli,  studying  one 
of  the  corruptest  of  human  societies,  once  conceived 
the  idea  of  reducing  politics  to  a  system,  on  the 
assumption  that  men  simply  acted  for  their  own 
interests  (the  very  assumption  of  the  economists).  He 
drew  up  a  wonderful  body  of  generalisations  closely 


LIMITS  OF  POLITICAL  ECONOMY    301 

related  to  the  special  society  and  logically  true  to  his 
special  assumption.  His  "Prince"  is  a  sort  of  Bible 
of  Political  Vice.  It  was  not  really  true  to  his  facts, 
nor  was  his  assumption  literally  true,  or  Italy  would 
have  realised  its  poet's  "  Inferno."  But  it  was 
sufficiently  true  to  exercise  a  frightful  effect  on  his 
contemporaries.  Nor  has  it  availed  him  and  his 
apologists  to  insist  that  his  theories  entirely  rested  on 
an  hypothesis  which  he  did  nothing  to  recommend  ; 
that  the  assumption  was  fairly  near  the  truth  where 
he  wrote ;  that  he  was  only  a  political  thinker 
analysing  the  phenomena  of  society.  It  has  not 
availed  to  save  a  man  of  many  noble  principles,  a 
martyr  to  his  faith,  from  being  a  by-word  for  cynical 
wickedness.  The  social  body,  even  less  than  the 
physical,  cannot  bear  those  crucial  experiments  of 
scientific  inquirers. 

IV 

We  may  now  sum  up  the  various  conditions  which 
limit  the  study  of  the  facts  of  Production.  The  first 
and  the  radical  condition  is  that  it  be  simply  a  branch 
of  a  general  system  of  society.  As  worked  out  by  a 
master  of  the  social  laws — by  men  like  Hume,  Adam 
Smith,  and  Mr.  Mill — the  study  is  of  great  value. 
But  even  then  it  will  be  marred  by  the  failings  and 
the  errors  of  the  social  theories  of  which  it  is  a  part. 
It  cannot  be  more  real  or  more  useful  than  they  are. 
Secondly,  that  portion  of  its  doctrines  which  depends 
not  on  human  motives  but  material  conditions  (the 
laws  which  govern  the  production  of  a  soap  bubble 
as  much  as  a  steamship)  may  be  taken  to  be  true 
really  and  always,  so  far  as  the  material  data  are 
scientifically  right.  All  that  portion  into  which 
human  motives  enter  is  real  only  so  far  as  the  whole 


302   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

range  of  motives  is  studied  j  and  inasmuch  as  the 
whole  body  of  other  human  acts  is  omitted,  is  real 
only  relatively  to  them.  In  this  portion,  the  bulk  of 
ordinary  economy,  there  is  but  one  rational  predicate 
— "/V."  But  such  words  as  "Ought"  "must," 
" will  be"  never  can  appear  in  its  formulae.  Thirdly, 
its  doctrines  are  purely  provisional  and  ephemeral. 
Its  data  being  the  forms  of  our  immediate  civilisation, 
it  has  no  bearing  beyond  it.  It  has  no  historical 
truth,  and  therefore  no  future  value.  It  had  no 
meaning  in  the  thirteenth  century  ;  and  may  have 
none  in  the  twentieth.  Fourthly,  the  application  of 
these  formulae  to  life,  from  the  fact  that  it  neglects 
time — and  in  most  relations  of  life  time  is  all-im- 
portant— and  from  the  extreme  complication  of  the 
subject,  is  of  all  intellectual  tasks  the  most  difficult 
and  hazardous.  To  navigate  an  ocean  with  a  know- 
ledge of  one  wind  or  one  current  alone  is  nothing  to 
it.  It  may  lure  a  nation  to  ruin,  and  demoralise  it  in 
the  process. 

It  being  understood  that  these  generalisations  never 
have  absolute  truth,  and  rarely  practical  value,  we  may 
add  some  tests  that  these  limits  are  observed.  The 
more  systematic  and  complete  are  the  social  principles 
on  which  they  rest,  the  more  valuable  and  sound  will 
be  the  economic  deductions.  They  grow  less  and 
less  so,  the  less  this  subordination  is  recognised.  The 
more  the  economic  generalisations  are  correct  historic- 
ally, the  more  likely  it  is  that  they  conform  to  human 
nature.  What  is  true  of  all  societies  and  times,  is 
probably  true  altogether.  The  more  the  special 
economic  facts  are  independent  of  general  institutions 
and  habits,  the  more  easy  they  are  to  be  isolated  and 
calculated.  The  more  they  depend  on  special  motives, 
the  more  accurate  will  be  the  analysis.  The  more 
temporary  the  human  relation  or  effort  they  involve, 


LIMITS  OF  POLITICAL  ECONOMY    303 

the  easier  they  are  to  explain.  The  more  they  depend 
on  special  and  highly  artificial  processes,  the  more 
independent  and  accurate  the  laws.  Prices  in  market 
overt,  currency,  bills  of  exchange,  monetary  practices, 
insurance,  restrictions  on  trade,  taxation,  form  subjects 
more  or  less  capable  of  accurate  generalisation  and 
very  valuable  principles.  Man  as  a  responsible  moral 
being,  human  life  as  a  whole,  is  less  directly  affected. 
But  wages,  profits,  accumulation,  consumption,  popu- 
lation, poor-laws,  land-systems,  partnership,  tenancy, 
trade-unions,  co-operation, — these  are  things  which 
involve  the  great  human  instincts,  wants,  and  institu- 
tions ;  and  they  are  for  the  most  part  beyond  the 
reach  of  a  mere  economist.  He  can  deal  with  the 
shell,  not  with  the  kernel  of  life,  for  of  permanent 
human  relations  and  forces  he  knows  nothing.  But 
what  does  this  list  of  tests  show  but  this  ? — that  with 
the  trivial  forms  of  existence  Economy  can  do  some- 
thing ;  with  the  greater,  nothing — that  it  can  only 
deal  with  these  as  it  widens  into  Social  Philosophy. 

No  doubt  the  bulk  of  the  ordinary  economists  have 
a  sort  of  social  philosophy,  a  general  theory  of  society. 
But  it  is  one  which  they  very  loosely  conceive ;  and 
would  be  quite  unable  to  prove.  It  is  certainly  one 
which  the  public  who  follow  them,  in  its  naked  form 
most  sternly  reject.  Most  of  them  are  more  or  less 
conscious  adherents  of  that  perverse  phase  of 
Benthamism  which  places  the  roots  of  morality  in 
the  selfish  instincts,  and  the  basis  of  society  on  absolute 
non-interference.  With  the  moral  doctrine  of  self- 
interest  and  the  political  doctrine  of  laissez-fairf 
(vaguely  understood)  the  pure  statistician  thinks  him- 
self prepared  for  investigating  production. 

But  the  authors  of  these  principles  were  not 
specialists.  Their  theories  of  self-interest  and  in- 
dividualism were  based  on  systematic  education,  on 


304    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

thorough  moral  training,  on  entire  social  reconstruc- 
tion. To  leave  all  these  to  take  care  of  themselves  is 
to  seize  on  the  mischievous  side  of  their  doctrines 
alone.  To  Bentham  self-interest  meant  a  very  culti- 
vated sense  of  duty  ;  to  the  economist  it  means  a  gross 
personal  appetite.  He  said,  Let  government  cease  to 
force,  so  that  men  may  be  educated  to  justice.  The 
economist  protests  against  interference,  so  that  the 
instinct  of  gain  be  unchecked.  If  his  general  principles 
are  right,  they  remain  to  be  proved.  That  they  be 
true,  that  they  be  complete,  that  they  be  systematic, 
is  all  essential.  They  are  what  physiology  is  to  the 
physician,  what  a  creed  is  to  the  priest.  If  these 
moral  and  social  problems  yet  await  a  decision,  they 
must  be  judged  in  themselves,  not  insinuated  in  a 
body  of  practical  rules  of  life.  In  the  meantime  it  is 
intolerable  that  in  the  innocent  form  of  a  scheme  for  in- 
creasing our  comfort,  society  should  be  saturated  with 
principles  which  philosophy  condemns  as  radically  false, 
and  the  moral  sense  rejects  as  profoundly  degrading. 

Is  it  that  no  social  philosophy  is  needed  ?  Is  it  that 
we  need  only  to  know  how  to  produce  more — not  how  to 
produce  in  a  more  human  way  ?  Does  industry  need 
no  correcting,  purifying,  guiding?  Are  there  not 
things  in  it  which  make  feeble  souls  look  on  material 
progress  as  a  curse  ?  Are  there  not  quarters  in  our 
big  cities  where  two  children  die  in  place  of  one — 
twenty  thousand,  where  ten  thousand  might  have 
been  saved  ;  where  sucking  infants  are  drugged  with 
opium,  and  farmed  at  nurse  by  a  hag  by  the  score  ; 
where  amidst  arsenic  and  brimstone  fumes  the  jaws 
fall  out,  the  bones  rot  off,  lungs  choke,  and  youths 
and  girls  die  faster  than  in  Mississippian  swamp  ? 
Are  there  no  "  works "  reeking  with  cruel  blots, 
where  toil  is  endless,  foul,  and  crushing, — where  the 
rich  man's  luxuries  are  elaborated  by  disease  and 


LIMITS  OF  POLITICAL  ECONOMY     305 

death, — where  unsexed  men  and  women  live  the  lives 
of  swine, — where  children  are  worn,  maimed,  poisoned 
as  in  a  "limbus  infantium," — stunted  in  soul  and 
limb,  polluted  and  polluting  r  Are  there  not  trades 
where  the  safeguards  against  death  are  forbidden,  that 
lives  may  fall  and  wages  rise  ?  Are  not  each  year 
one  thousand  lives  lost  in  coal  mines,  "chiefly  from 
preventible  causes "  ?  Are  there  not  our  million  or 
so  of  paupers  whom  neglect  leaves  sometimes  to  fester 
to  death, — sometimes  to  die  in  parturition.  Are  there 
not  gangs  of  women  and  children  driven  from  farm  to 
farm  by  an  actual  slave-driver  ?  Is  there  not  our  rural 
labourer,  the  portent  of  England,  without  hope  or 
energy  ;  plodding  wearily  through  life  like  his  ox  ? 

And  where  such  abominations  are  not,  is  there  not 
amidst  the  healthier  forms  of  labour  a  deep  class  feud, 
and  spirit  of  strife,  sweeping  across  our  modern 
industry,  as  the  plagues  and  famines  of  the  later 
middle  ages  swept  over  Europe, — gigantic  outrages 
and  strikes,  shaking  the  fabric  of  society,  and  threaten- 
ing its  very  institutions  ;  on  the  one  side  a  wild  sense 
of  wrong,  on  the  other  a  raging  desire  to  be  rich  ? 
These  are  the  evils  we  see,  and  for  which  we  need  a 
remedy  j  evils  of  moral,  social  kinds,  coming  out  of 
rotten  systems  of  life  and  ungovernable  passions. 
And  they  tell  us  that  the  cure  is  to  be  found  in  a 
knowledge  of  Political  Economy — in  the  study  of 
hypothetical  laws^  which  would  be  true  if  all  men 
followed  their  selfish  instincts. 

We  need  indeed  a  social  philosophy.  If  one 
instinct  can  be  reduced  to  a  method,  others  can.  If 
one  form  of  activity  can  be  systematised,  all  the  forms 
and  life  itself  can.  Where  are  the  laws  of  Production 
on  the  hypothesis  of  Duty  ?  Where  are  the  principles 
of  morality  and  sociality  :  of  good-feeling,  of  equity, 
of  protection,  of  good  faith,  of  self-denial,  as  applied 


3o6   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

to  Industry  ?  Where  is  the  science  of  popular  educa- 
tion ?  If  there  be  a  science  of  the  Acquisitive 
instinct,  we  need  one  much  more  of  the  Protecting 
instinct.  If  these  have  not  been  done,  it  is  because 
so  great  a  part  of  modern  intellect  and  study  has  been 
absorbed  in  analysing  one  phase  of  life  and  one  instinct 
of  the  soul — a  phase  the  most  obvious  to  specialise,  an 
instinct  the  most  dangerous  to  isolate. 


II 

TRADES-UNIONISM 

(1865) 

The  following  is  part  of  an  article  published  in  the  second 
volume  of  the  Fortnightly  Review  under  the  editorship 
of  Mr.  George  H.  Lewes. 

After  the  great  lock-out  in  the  Building  Trades  of 
1862,  the  writer  had  been  in  close  relations  with  the 
secretaries  and  committees  of  the  chief  Unions.  He  had  also 
often  visited  the  Unions  at  Leeds,  Manchester,  Bradford, 
Halifax,  Rochdale,  Sheffield,  and  Nottingham.  During 
the  Cotton  Famine,  together  with  the  late  Sir  Godfrey 
Lushington,  he  conducted  a  personal  inquiry  into  the 
condition  of  the  Lancashire  operatives'1  societies  of  all 
kinds.  He  had  also  written  much  in  the  Bee  Hive,  and 
other  workmen's  organs,  and  afterwards  in  the  Pall  Mall 
Gazette. 

Although  this  sketch  of  Trades-  Unionism  is  now  more 
than  forty  years  old,  as  it  was  founded  on  personal 
knowledge  of  the  societies  and  on  intimacy  with  many  of 
their  managers,  there  is  no  reason  to  change,  or  even  to 
qualify,  the  principles  here  insisted  upon — principles  which 
the  whole  evidence  laid  before  the  Trades  Union  Commission 
of  1867-9  amply  justified — and  which  have  since  been 
adopted  by  the  legislature  (1908). 

OF  the  features  of  our  industrial  system,  none  is  more 
307 


308    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

important  to  study  than  that  most  significant  fact — the 
institution,  growth,  and  power  of  Trades-Unionism. 
It  is  in  reality  the  practical  solution  of  all  labour 
questions,  to  which  the  labouring  classes  cling.  Right 
or  wrong,  it  is  their  panacea.  It  is  in  many  ways  by 
far  the  most  powerful  element  of  our  industrial  system 
that  has  been  yet  organised  into  an  institution.  It 
thus  goes  to  the  very  root  of  the  most  vital  movements 
of  society.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  whole 
political,  practical,  and  organising  energies  of  the 
working  class  are  now  thrown  into  it.  If  reform  bills 
languish,  and  agitation  lingers  to  awake,  it  is  because 
they  are  absorbed  in  industrial  rather  than  political 
leagues.  No  one  can  suppose  that  the  existing  dead 
calm  and  indecision  in  the  political  sphere  really 
represents  the  practical  instinct  and  energy  of  English- 
men. It  is  not  so.  Our  real  public  movements  and 
struggles  are  industrial.  In  them  powers  of  will  and 
sympathy  are  being  exerted  as  keen  as  ever  thrilled 
in  our  hottest  political  convulsions.  Of  this  move- 
ment the  heart  and  centre  —  the  club-life  —  the 
associative,  initiative,  and  reserve  force,  is  Unionism 
— a  force,  on  the  whole,  of  which  the  public 
should  know  the  whole  truth — and  nothing  but  the 
truth. 

I.  The  first  thing  is  to  recognise  the  extent  and 
importance  of  the  movement  itself.  For  all  general 
purposes  the  unions  can  count  upon  the  support  and 
contributions  of  at  least  an  equal  number  of  the  work- 
men who  are  not  regular  members  of  the  society. 
Their  "war-footing,"  it  may  be  said,  is  about  double 
that  of  their  peace  establishment.  For  all  practical 
purposes,  therefore,  the  unions  may  be  taken  to 
represent  the  available  strength  of  the  whole  skilled 
body  of  artisans.  Nor  are  these  recent  or  precarious 


TRADES-UNIONISM  309 

associations.  Most  of  them  have  steadily  increased 
in  numbers,  income,  and  extent  for  the  last  ten  or 
fifteen  years.  Trades  in  which  the  most  obstinate 
struggles  have  taken  place — the  engineers,  the  colliers, 
the  cotton-spinners,  the  building  trades — still  show  the 
unions  far  larger  and  more  flourishing  than  before. 
Any  one  who  will  take  the  trouble  to  collect  and 
examine  the  latest  trade  circulars  of  the  principal 
societies  will  see  the  record  of  their  progress.  Increased 
numbers,  wider  area,  and  larger  funds  are  shown  from 
year  to  year.  Everywhere  organisation,  consolida- 
tion, and  regularity  extend.  Englishmen,  who  never 
mistake  the  signs  of  commercial  success,  can  hardly 
fail  to  see  that  there  must  be  something  at  bottom  to 
make  these  live  ;  and  men  who  know  how  to  estimate 
political  forces  will  recognise  the  strength  of  an 
institution  that  has  an  organisation  to  which  no 
political  association  in  the  kingdom  can  distantly 
aspire. 

In  the  face  of  facts  like  these,  it  does  seem  strange 
that  sensible  men,  and  even  sensible  employers,  should 
continue  to  talk  of  unions  as  nests  of  misery,  folly, 
and  ruin.  Men  who  have  to  deal  with  these  powerful 
associations  themselves  can  bring  themselves  to  speak 
of  them  as  "cancers  to  be  cut  out,"  as  "diseases,"  and 
"  madness  "  to  be  cured,  and  even  suggest  an  Act  of 
Parliament  to  suppress  all  associations  whatever.  It  is 
like  the  Vatican  raving  at  newspapers  and  railways. 
Such  an  Act  of  Parliament  would  be  simply  a  social  re- 
volution. It  would  be  as  easy  to  eradicate  the  "  cancer  " 
of  unionism  as  it  would  to  eradicate  the  "  cancer  "  of 
public  meetings,  or  the  "  disease "  of  a  free  press. 
The  fact  that  the  flower  of  our  artisan  population  are 
staunch  unionists,  does  not  prove  that  unions  are  bene- 
ficial. But  it  would  be  more  reasonable  if  the  public, 
and  certainly  if  employers,  would  think  it  proved  them 


310 

to  be  not  quite  pestilent  and  suicidal.  They  are,  from 
the  mere  fact  of  their  importance,  entitled  to  respect. 
No  rational  man  can  think  that  the  working  men  of 
this  country  are  likely  to  be  found  year  after  year 
more  and  more  devoted  to  any  system,  if  it  were  no 
less  ruinous  to  themselves  than  vicious  in  principle. 
Unionism,  right  or  wrong,  is  the  grand  movement  in 
which  the  working  classes  have  their  heart.  Men  of 
sense  will  recognise  this  fact,  and  deal  with  it  accord- 
ingly. It  is  the  prevalence  of  misjudgments  like 
these  which  make  these  trade  struggles  so  obstinate  ; 
and  perhaps  it  is  that  which  makes  them  so  common. 
There  is  a  still  worse  form  of  misconception  prevalent, 
which  amounts  sometimes  to  personal  calumny.  It  is 
still  the  fashion  to  repeat  that  unions  and  strikes  are 
uniformly  the  work  of  interested  agitators.  These 
men,  in  the  stereotyped  phrase,  are  supposed  to  drive 
their  misguided  victims  like  sheep.  We  hear  from 
time  to  time  employers  giving  us  this  account  of  the 
matter  in  apparent  good  faith  ;  just  as  the  Austrians 
always  thought  the  Italian  movement  was  the  work 
of  Mazzini.  Now  if  there  is  one  feature  of  unionism 
which  is  more  singular  than  another  it  is  the  scrupulous 
care  with  which  it  maintains  the  principles  of  demo- 
cratic and  representative  government.  It  would  be 
difficult  to  find  a  single  trade  society  in  England  in 
which  any  official  or  any  board  of  managers  could 
take  any  important  step,  or,  what  is  the  same  thing, 
deal  with  the  common  funds  without  a  regular  written 
vote  from  their  constituents.  Those  who  talk  of  the 
action  of  a  trade-union  as  if  it  were  a  body  of  Car- 
bonari, must  be  entirely  ignorant  of  the  elaborate 
machinery  by  which  a  union  is  worked.  Before  any 
important  step,  much  less  before  a  general  strike  is 
determined  on,  regular  voting  papers  are  sent  round 
to  every  member  of  the  society  ;  the  step  is  discussed 


TRADES-UNIONISM  31 1 

night  after  night  in  every  separate  lodge ;  if  the 
subject  requires  it,  delegates  are  chosen  from  each 
lodge  ;  conferences  are  constantly  held,  often  followed 
by  fresh  appeals  to  the  constituencies  ;  the  discussions 
often  last  six  months,  and  are  practically  public  ;  the 
result  is  at  length  ascertained  by  a  simple  comparison 
of  votes,  and  is  often  one  which  the  secretaries  and 
managers  have  no  means  whatever  of  influencing  or 
even  foreseeing. 

In  fact  the  vote  on  an  important  question  of  one 
of  the  large  amalgamated  societies  scattered  over  the 
country,  the  separate  lodges  of  which  discuss  the  subject 
under  very  different  conditions,  and  the  body  of  which 
the  secretaries  have  no  means  whatever  of  addressing  or 
meeting,  is  the  purest  type  of  democratic  representation 
of  opinion.  The  subject  is  one  which  usually  touches 
each  voter,  his  comfort,  his  family,  and  his  future,  in 
the  most  vital  manner ;  it  relates  to  matters  with 
which  he  is  perfectly  familiar  j  he  is  not  accessible  to 
personal  appeal,  nor,  except  in  a  very  small  degree,  to 
written  addresses  from  any  central  authority  ;  it  is  one 
which  he  has  to  discuss  with  a  small  number  of  his 
fellows,  and  on  which  he  has  to  vote  with  a  very  large 
number,  but  without  communication  ;  the  ordinary 
machinery  of  canvassing,  excitement,  and  party 
agitation  is  simply  impossible  ;  and  the  result  is  one 
which  it  is  out  of  the  question  to  predict.  It  is  a 
species  of  pure  democratic  united  with  true  repre- 
sentative government.  The  members  individually 
vote  as  in  an  ancient  republic,  but  generally  with 
the  assistance  and  counsel  of  special  representative 
assemblies,  and  invariably  in  separate  and  independent 
groups.  If  any  system  ever  yet  devised  makes  a 
dictator  or  a  demagogue  impossible  it  is  this.  Its 
great  defect  is  its  cumbrousness  and  want  of  con- 
centration. But  of  all  others  it  is  the  way  to  bring 


312    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

out  the  deliberate  opinion  of  every  individual  member. 
It  is  this — not  infatuation — which  makes  a  deliberate 
strike  so  obstinate.  There  is  no  political  institution 
in  this  country  which  carries  self-government  to 
anything  like  the  same  pitch.  And,  what  should 
not  be  forgotten,  it  is  a  system  which  has  already 
given  the  whole  class  a  very  high  degree  of  political 
education. 

As  to  the  managers  of  these  associations  they  are 
invariably  elected  periodically  by  the  same  general 
suffrage.  They  are  almost  invariably  simple  members 
of  the  body  themselves,  and  their  salaries  scarcely 
exceed  their  ordinary  wages.  So  far  as  the  personal 
knowledge  of  the  writer  goes  (and  it  is  not  incon- 
siderable), they  are  usually  honest,  sensible  men  of 
business,  sometimes  strikingly  deficient  in  the  art  of 
expression,  and  the  powers  of  party  agitators.  The 
men  who  direct  a  strike  have  usually  been  at  their 
work  until  its  commencement,  and  would  usually 
return  to  it  at  its  close,  were  it  not  that  they  are  too 
often  chased  out  of  their  trade  by  all  the  employers 
in  concert. 

The  present  writer,  who  has  for  years  known  inti- 
mately the  managers  of  very  many  societies,  cannot 
refrain  from  bearing  his  witness  that  amongst  them 
are  to  be  found  men  as  upright,  enlightened,  and 
honourable  as  any  in  the  community  ;  that  the  influ- 
ence they  possess  is  almost  always  the  result  of  tried 
ability  and  character  ;  and  the  instances  of  such  men 
living  out  of  their  followers'  necessities  are  extremely 
rare.  For  the  most  part  they  go  through  hard  clerks' 
routine  of  accounts  and  reports,  under  a  good  deal  of 
persecution  from  the  employers,  and  are  not  seldom 
the  most  conservative  and  peaceful  counsellors  in 
the  whole  society.  The  union  is  frequently  able  to 
suppress  the  tendency  to  indiscriminate  strikes.  It  is, 


TRADES-UNIONISM  313 

indeed,  notorious  that  the  faults  into  which  the  leaders 
of  the  established  unions  are  apt  to  fall  are  routine  and 
excess  of  caution.  I  have  myself  seen  a  circular  issued 
by  the  council  of  an  amalgamated  society  to  warn  the 
members  against  the  disposition  to  strike  for  which  a 
sudden  improvement  of  trade  had  given  great  facilities. 
The  larger  and  more  established  the  unions  become, 
the  fewer  causes  of  struggle  arise.  And  there  would 
be  no  greater  security  for  the  employer  and  the  public 
than  that  the  societies  should  be  stronger,  and  their 
leaders  more  trusted. 

II.  Next  to  the  character  of  these  societies  and 
their  leaders  being  fairly  judged,  it  is  very  desirable 
that  the  truth  be  ascertained  as  to  the  success  or  non- 
success  of  strikes.  It  used  to  be  frequently  said,  and 
it  has  been  repeated  occasionally  by  employers,  that 
strikes  never  succeed.  It  is  only  the  other  day  that 
the  newspapers  informed  us  of  a  very  important  strike 
which  did  result  in  a  great  increase  of  wages.  The 
carpenters  of  London,  a  body  numbering  from  10,000 
to  15,000,  the  majority  of  whom  are  in  union, 
demanded,  and  after  a  strike  of  some  weeks,  defeating 
a  threatened  lock-out,  succeeded  in  obtaining,  an 
advance  of  wages  of  about  10  per  cent.  This  advance 
is  now  being  given  to  the  other  building  trades,  and 
will  soon  be  general.  No  one  doubts  that  this  rise  is 
permanent,  and  will  never  be  reduced.  There  is  here 
an  undoubted  instance  of  a  body  numbering  nearly 
40,000  men  obtaining  a  large  and  permanent  rise  of 
wages  by  means  of  a  strike.  How  this  is  economically 
possible  had  better  be  answered  by  those  economists 
who  first  invent  industrial  laws,  and  then  invent  facts 
to  fit  them. 

The  statement,  indeed,-  is  so  contrary  to  the 
experience  of  every  one  who  has  been  able  to  look  at 


314    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  question  from  an  independent  point,  and  over  a 
wide  area,  that  there  is  overwhelming  proof  that  it  is 
entirely  erroneous.  Any  one  who  will  search  the  files 
of  a  working-class  organ  will  find  accurate  reports  of 
countless  successful  strikes  over  every  part  of  England. 
The  present  writer  has  in  his  possession  a  list  of  the 
successful  strikes  for  one  single  trade  in  one  year. 
This  list  contains  more  than  eighty  instances  in  which 
one  union  in  that  period  had  by  actual  or  threatened 
strikes  obtained  increased  wages,  or,  what  is  the  same 
thing,  shorter  hours. 

The  sums  which  are  absurdly  calculated  as  "  lost " 
in  a  strike  are  usually  not  lost  at  all,  but  only  retained. 
No  doubt,  in  every  prolonged  strike  a  good  deal  is 
lost,  but  it  is  chiefly  in  interest  upon  fixed  capital. 
To  calculate  all  the  sums  which  might  have  been 
spent  in  wages  as  "  lost "  or  "  wasted "  is  simply 
puerile.  The  wages  fund,  in  the  language  of  econo- 
mists, is  the  sum  which  the  capitalist  devotes  to  the 
payment  of  wages  ;  and  since  in  a  general  strike  or 
lock-out  the  owners  of  vast  and  costly  factories  cannot 
employ  the  fund  (except  temporarily)  in  any  other 
way,  and  their  customers  have  to  wait  for  their  goods, 
sooner  or  later  the  wages  fund,  or  most  of  it,  is  paid 
to  the  workmen  in  the  trade.  Whether  it  conies  to 
them  regularly  or  spasmodically  signifies  a  great  deal 
to  the  well-being  of  the  recipients  ;  but  in  the  long 
run  they  get  the  gross  sum,  though  somewhat  dis- 
counted. General  and  even  partial  strikes  are  usually 
preceded  and  succeeded  by  extra  production  and 
labour,  which  nearly  equalise  the  rate  for  the  whole 
period.  Very  many  lock-outs  are  simply  a  mode  of 
stopping  production  during  a  stagnant  state  of  trade, 
and  are  occasionally  only  a  device  of  some  of  the  more 
powerful  employers  to  force  their  own  body  to  cease 
production,  whilst  they  are  waiting  or  manoeuvring 


TRADES-UNIONISM  315 

for  a  rise  of  price.  During  a  strike  both  masters  and 
men  reduce  all  expenditure  to  a  minimum,  which  by 
itself  is  an  obvious  saving.  And  there  are  many 
strikes  and  lock-outs  in  which  the  actual  loss  from 
various  causes  is  a  trifle,  or  where  it  would  be  inevit- 
able from  other  causes.  But  in  any  case,  to  calculate 
the  deferred  expenditure  of  wages  as  "loss"  is  a 
sophistical  use  of  terms.  The  employer  in  a  strike 
suffers  the  loss  of  interest  on  fixed  capital,  and  of  his 
profit  (a  loss  which  is  often  from  other  reasons  inevit- 
able) ;  the  workman  suffers  a  loss  of  comfort  which 
is  often  compensated  by  the  discipline  it  enforces. 
The  real  loss  is  the  loss  of  common  interest  and  good 
feeling  ;  but  the  supposed  loss  of  wages  rests  generally 
on  a  mere  juggle  of  words. 

A  careful  investigation  of  the  subject  in  such 
records  as  are  constantly  published,  totally  dispels  the 
prevalent  idea  that  unions  and  strikes  have  no  object 
but  that  of  raising  wages,  and  in  that  object  they  in- 
variably meet  a  "  miserable  monotony  of  defeat." 

Strikes,  of  course,  frequently  fail.  But  a  careful 
comparison  will  show  the  following  results : — 

1.  Strikes  to  obtain  a  rise  of  wages  or  a  reduction 
of  hours  usually  succeed. 

2.  Strikes   to  resist  a  reduction   of  wages  usually 
fail. 

3.  Strikes   to   enforce   trade  rules    or    to    suppress 
objectionable  practices   usually  fail  in  appearance  and 
succeed  in  reality. 

4.  Lock-outs  to  crush  unions  invariably  fail. 

III.  After  that  of  general  protection  against  abuses 
and  against  overtime,  one  of  the  chief  and  the  most 
useful  functions  of  Unionism  is  to  resist  the  tendency 
to  continual  fluctuations  in  wages.  At  first  sight 
nothing  seems  more  natural  than  that  wages  should 


316    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

vary  with  the  price  of  the  product.  The  principal 
objection,  however,  against  the  sliding  scale  of  wages 
and  prices  is  that  it  associates  the  workmen  directly 
with  the  gambling  vicissitudes  of  the  market.  To  do 
this  is  to  destroy  one  of  the  benefits  of  civilisation  and 
the  social  justification  of  large  capitals.  It  is  of  vital 
interest  to  society  that  the  actual  labourer  should  have 
a  regular  and  not  a  fluctuating  means  of  subsistence. 
As  he  can  save  but  little,  he  has  no  reserve  to  stand 
sudden  changes  j  and  sudden  loss  or  stoppage  of  his 
wages  means  moral  and  physical  degradation  to  him. 
He  has  not  the  education  or  the  means  of  foreseeing, 
much  less  of  providing  against,  the  wider  influences 
of  the  market.  The  great  gains  and  the  great  losses 
naturally  should  fall  to  the  share  of  the  capitalist 
alone. 

He  and  his  order  can  act  on  the  state  of  the  market, 
and  are  bound  to  watch  and  know  its  movements. 
Society  is  bound  to  protect  them  only  on  condition 
that  they  perform  this  function  satisfactorily.  But  to 
let  every  little  vicissitude  of  the  market  fall  directly  on 
the  mere  labourer,  who  knows  nothing  about  it,  and 
cannot  affect  it  if  he  did,  is  simple  barbarism.  In 
such  a  state  of  things  the  capitalist  abdicates  his  real 
post  and  becomes  a  mere  job-master  or  ganger.  He 
associates  his  helpless  workmen  in  every  speculative 
adventure.  He  leaves  them  to  bear  the  effects  of  a 
glut  which  his  recklessness  may  have  caused,  or  of  a 
foreign  war  which  his  prudence  might  have  foreseen. 
Every  fall  in  the  price  of  wares,  fluctuating  as  this  is 
from  a  complication  of  accidents,  mulcts  the  labourer 
suddenly  of  ten,  twelve,  or  fifteen  per  cent  of  his 
living.  How  many  middle-class  families  could  stand 
this  every  quarter  ?  To  the  labourer,  who  has  rio 
reserve,  no  credit,  and  no  funded  income,  and  who  by 
the  necessity  of  the  case  lives  from  week  to  week  and 


TRADES-UNIONISM  317 

from  hand  to  mouth,  it  means  the  sacrifice  of  his 
comforts,  of  his  children's  education,  of  his  honest 
efforts.  There  was  truth,  though  it  may  be  not  very 
fully  expressed,  in  the  words  of  the  old  puddler  at  the 
recent  conference :  "  He  knew  no  reason  why  work- 
ing men's  wages  were  to  be  pulled  to  pieces  to  suit 
the  foreign  markets."  Capital,  in  fact,  would  become 
a  social  nuisance  if  it  could  only  make  the  labourer  a 
blind  co-speculator  in  its  adventures. 

It  is  far  from  the  writer's  meaning  to  deny  that 
wages  must  in  the  long  run  be  accommodated  to 
profits.  From  year  to  year,  or  over  longer  periods, 
wages  will  gradually  find  their  level.  But  it  is  a 
totally  different  thing  that  they  should  fluctuate  with 
all  the  erratic  movements  incident  to  every  market 
price-list.  A  merchant  will  not  give  to  his  accountants 
more  than  the  average  salaries  of  his  business.  He 
does  not,  however,  walk  into  his  counting-house,  and 
tell  his  clerks  that,  having  lost  a  ship  which  he  forgot 
to  insure,  he  reduces  their  salaries  ten  per  cent.  The 
wages  of  all  the  superior  trades  are,  or  might  be, 
nearly  stationary  for  long  periods  together.  The 
engineers,  who  form  a  branch  of  the  iron  trade, 
subject  to  amazing  fluctuations,  have  been  paid  at 
the  same  rates  now  invariably  for  more  than  ten  years. 
So  till  the  rise  of  the  last  few  months  had  the  London 
builders.  Of  course  the  men,  to  do  this,  must  have 
foregone  every  temporary  or  partial  rise.  For  their 
true  good  these  sudden  advances  in  wages  do  them 
more  real  harm  even  than  sudden  reduction.  Acting 
on  this  principle  the  trades  just  mentioned,  and  most 
of  the  leading  trades,  have  maintained  an  unvarying 
rate  of  wages,  as  well  as  suppressed  those  spasmodic 
seasons  of  excessive  production  and  sudden  cessation 
which  form  the  glory  of  the  race  of  industrial 
conquerors.  But  to  do  this  the  workmen  must 


318    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

have  a  union  capable  of  putting  them  on  an  equality 
with  capital. 

As  it  is  this  interference  with  what  is  called  Free 
Trade  which  is  the  main  charge  against  Unionism,  it 
is  important  to  examine  this  question  in  detail.  It 
is  often  asked  why  cannot  the  fifty  shillings'  worth 
of  puddling  be  bought  in  the  same  manner  as  fifty 
shillings'  worth  of  pig-iron  ?  Well,  one  thing  is, 
that  the  pig-iron  can  wait  till  next  week  or  next 
month.  It  is  in  no  immediate  hurry.  But  the  fifty 
shillings'  worth  of  puddling  cannot  wait,  even  a  few 
days.  The  "human  machine"  in  question  is  liable 
to  the  fatal  defect  of  dying.  Nor  is  it  in  all  the 
relations  of  life  that  "  each  man  is  free  to  bargain  for 
himself."  It  is  curious  in  how  many  sides  of  our 
existence  this  liberty  is  curtailed.  If  one  wants 
^1000  worth  of  horse,  one  can  go  to  Tattersall's 
and  buy  it  without  question.  But  if  one  wants 
j^iooo  worth  of  wife,  there  will  be  a  good  many 
questions  asked,  and  a  good  many  people  to  consult. 
The  lady's  relations  even  may  wish  to  say  something ; 
there  may  be  all  sorts  of  stipulations,  to  say  nothing 
of  settlements.  A  man  cannot  buy  a  place  in  a 
partnership  exactly  in  open  market.  He  cannot  go 
to  a  physician  or  a  lawyer  or  a  priest  and  haggle 
about  the  fee. 

Wherever  there  are  close  or  permanent  human 
relations,  between  one  man  and  many,  an  under- 
standing with  all  jointly  is  the  regular  course.  Every 
partnership  of  labour,  all  co-operation  to  effect  any- 
thing in  common,  involves  this  mutual  agreement 
between  all.  It  is  because  employers  fail  to  see  that 
manufacture  is  only  the  combined  labour  of  many  of 
which  they  are  the  managers,  that  they  regard  the 
whole  concern,  stock,  plant,  and  "  hands,"  as  raw 
material,  to  be  bought  and  sold.  The  ironmaster 


TRADES-UNIONISM  319 

who  buys  pig-iron  is  not  entering  into  permanent 
relations  with  it,  or  even  with  its  possessor.  It 
cannot  work  with  him,  obey  him,  trust  him.  The 
"  human  machine,"  however,  is  a  very  surprising 
engine.  It  has  a  multitude  of  wants,  a  variety  of 
feelings,  and  is  capable  of  numerous  human  impulses 
which  are  commonly  called  human  nature.  An  iron- 
master cannot  buy  in  open  market  fifty  shillings' 
worth  of  puddling,  because  he  does  not  want  fifty 
shillings'  worth  of  puddling.  It  would  be  of  no  good 
to  him  if  he  had  it.  He  wants  a  man  who  will  work, 
not  his  fifty  shillings'  worth  of  puddling,  but  day  by 
day  and  year  by  year  ;  who  will  work  when  he  is  not 
himself  overlooking  him  ;  who  will  work  intelligently, 
and  not  ruin  his  machinery  and  waste  his  stuff;  who 
will  not  cheat  him,  or  rob  him,  or  murder  him  ;  who 
will  work  as  a  chance  hireling  will  not  and  cannot 
work  ;  who  will  trust  him  to  act  fairly,  and  feel  pride 
in  his  work,  and  in  the  place. 

If  he  cannot  get  men  like  these  he  knows  that  he 
will  be  ruined  and  undersold  by  those  who  can.  He 
knows  that  fifty  shillings'  worth  of  black  slave  would 
not  help  him,  nor  fifty  shillings'  worth  of  steam  engine. 
Do  what  he  will,  perfect  machinery  to  a  miracle,  still 
the  manufacturer  must  ultimately  depend  on  the  co- 
operation of  human  brains  and  hearts.  No  "human 
machinery"  will  serve  his  end.  Can  a  general  in  war 
buy  fifty  shillings'  worth  of  devoted  soldiers  ?  Can 
he  make  his  bargain  with  each  man  of  his  army 
separately  ?  They  are  too  precious  to  be  picked  up 
in  a  moment,  and  their  efficiency  lies  in  their  union. 
If  the  ironmaster  had  to  go  into  the  labour  market 
as  often  as  he  has  to  go  into  the  iron  market,  and 
haggle  for  every  day's  work  as  he  does  for  every  pig 
and  bar,  he  would  be  a  dead  or  ruined  man  in  a  year. 
He  cannot  buy  puddling  as  he  can  buy  pigs,  because 


320     NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

in  one  word  men  are  not  pig-iron.  Sentiment  this, 
perhaps,  but  a  sentiment  which  cannot  be  conquered, 
and  produces  stern  facts.  For  the  fifty  shillings' 
worth  of  puddling  by  long  reflection  has  discovered 
that  to  the  making  of  iron  goes  the  enduring,  willing, 
intelligent  labour  of  many  trained  men  ;  that  it  is 
work  which  is  impossible  without  a  permanent  com- 
bination of  will  and  thought,  but  the  produce  of 
which  may  be  unfairly  divided  unless  all  act  with  a 
spirit  of  mutual  defence  and  protection.  They  see 
their  employers  too  often  forgetting  this,  the  under- 
lying fact  of  all  industry,  and  their  answer  is, 
Unionism.  Sentimental !  emotional  economy  !  but 
a  fact.  When  pigs  and  bars  of  iron  exhibit  a  similar 
phenomenon,  an  ironmaster  will  buy  his  fifty  shillings' 
worth  of  puddling  as  freely  as  he  buys  his  pigs  or  his 
bars, — but  not  till  then. 

IV.  It  seems  almost  waste  of  time,  in  the  face  of 
the  prevalent  tendency  of  working  men  to  unite,  to 
argue  that  there  is  not  the  slightest  necessity  for  it. 
But  the  fact  that  without  combination  the  capitalist 
has  a  tremendous  advantage  over  the  labourer  is  so 
important  a  matter  in  this  discussion,  that  it  may  be 
well  to  examine  it  further.  Now  this  advantage  arises 
in  at  least  three  ways.  In  the  first  place,  although 
the  workmen  altogether  are  just  as  necessary  to  the 
capitalist  as  he  is  to  them,  yet  in  a  great  factory  each 
separate  workman  is  of  infinitesimal  necessity  to  the 
proprietor,  whilst  he  is  of  vital  necessity  to  the  work- 
man. The  employer  of  1000  men  can  without  incon- 
venience at  any  moment  dispense  with  one  man  or 
even  ten  men.  -The  one  man,  however,  if  he  has  no 
means  or  reserve  to  find  other  employment,  must 
submit  on  pain  of  destitution  to  himself  and  his 
family.  In  the  same  way,  if  there  were  absolutely 


TRADES-UNIONISM  321 

no  concert  or  communication  between  them,  the 
employer  could  easily  deal  with  every  one  of  his 
thousand  hands  in  succession,  just  as  a  giant  could 
destroy  an  army  if  he  could  get  at  each  man  separ- 
ately. But  the  moment  they  agree  to  act  together, 
and  to  help  each  other  in  turn,  the  bargain  is  equal- 
ised ;  the  need  which  each  side  has  of  the  other  is  on 
a  par,  and  the  power  each  has  to  hold  its  ground  is 
nearly  equivalent. 

In  the  second  place,  the  kind  of  need  which  each 
has  of  the  other  is  very  different.  The  capitalist 
needs  the  labourer  to  make  larger  profits.  A  diminu- 
tion of  these,  their  total  cessation,  and  positive  loss,  is 
an  evil ;  but  it  is  an  evil  which  most  capitalists  can 
very  well  sustain,  and  often  experience,  for  years  at  a 
time.  A  strike  or  a  lock-out  is  a  blow  to  a  capitalist ; 
but  it  is  like  a  bad  debt  or  a  bad  speculation, — it 
is  an  incident  of  his  trade,  allowed  for  and  provided 
against.  But  to  the  workman  (who  would  not  be  a 
workman  if  he  had  even  a  little  capital)  the  stoppage 
of  wages,  in  the  absence  of  any  combination  or  fund, 
means  utter  destruction,  disease,  death,  and  personal 
degradation,  eviction  from  his  house  and  home,  the 
sale  of  his  goods  and  belongings,  the  break-up  of  his 
household,  the  humiliation  of  his  wife,  the  ruin  of  his 
children's  bodies  and  minds.  To  the  capitalist  a  trade 
struggle  is  a  blot  in  his  balance-sheet.  To  the  work- 
man, if  isolated  and  unaided^  it  means  every  affliction 
which  the  imagination  can  conceive. 

Thirdly,  this  is  a  question  in  which  time  is  all- 
important.  To  the  capitalist  weeks  or  months  at 
most  represent  pecuniary  loss.  To  the  unaided 
workman  weeks  often,  to  say  nothing  of  months,  are 
simply  starvation  for  himself  and  his  family.  Alone, 
the  working  man  must  take  his  wages  down  on 
Saturday  night  at  a  fearful  discount.  If  he  could 

y 


322    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

wait  for  his  money  he  would  get  them  in  full.  The 
Dorsetshire  labourer,  ignorant  and  hopeless,  could  get 
double  wages  in  a  Northern  county — if  he  could  get 
there.  He  sometimes  knows  this ;  but  he  will  not 
leave  his  wife  and  children  to  the  death  of  the  grave  or 
the  workhouse.  If  all  the  labourers  in  England  could 
lie  in  bed  for  a  month  during  harvest,  they  might  get 
any  wages  they  liked  to  ask  ;  and  a  dozen  of  cham- 
pagne all  round.  Wages  questions  are  simply  questions 
of  time,  and  capital  means  insurance  against  time.  The 
familiar  and  recognised  analysis  of  labour  and  capital 
comes  only  to  this — that  capital  forms  the  store  by 
which  the  workmen  are  supported  until  the  joint 
product  can  be  utilised  or  exchanged ;  wages  are  only 
the  portions  of  this  store  meted  out  periodically  to  the 
workmen  whilst  they  are  uniting  and  labouring.  By 
the  very  essence  of  this  arrangement  the  possessor  of 
this  store  (and  in  the  abstract  no  man  is  the  possessor 
of  it  except  by  the  free  will  of  the  rest)  can  wait  his 
own  time.  The  recipients  of  it  cannot.  To  any  one 
who  follows  out  all  these  considerations,  it  may  well 
seem  simple  pedantry  to  accumulate  arguments  to 
show  that  the  capitalist  and  the  individual  workman 
are  on  equal  terms.  It  is  obvious  to  the  daily  ex- 
perience of  all  mankind  that  they  are  not ;  and  all  the 
reasoning  in  the  world  cannot  make  them  to  be  so. 

There  remains,  of  course,  to  be  noticed  the  com- 
petition of  the  employers.  This  is  the  sole  reply  of 
the  other  side  to  all  the  reasons  just  mentioned.  No 
doubt  the  influence  of  this  competition  is  very  great 
— without  it  the  workmen  would  be  (what  they 
occasionally  are)  at  the  mercy  of  the  capitalists.  But 
the  question  is,  whether  its  influence  is  so  great  as  to 
counterbalance  all  else  on  the  other  side,,  and  establish 
an  equality.  Now  this  competition  of  the  employers 
for  the  workmen  is  subject  to  two  very  important 


TRADES-UNIONISM  323 

qualifications.  The  first  is  that  there  is  a  universal 
and  irresistible  tendency  in  all  employers,  which  (as 
Adam  Smith  shows)  is  much  more  powerful  and 
efficient  in  the  smaller  class  —  capitalists  and  sellers 
as  against  the  workmen  and  the  public — not  to  raise 
wages  or  lower  prices.  This  is  the  "silent  combina- 
tion," which  needs  no  formal  expression,  and  generally 
becomes  a  point  of  honour.  To  such  a  pitch  is  this 
carried  that,  for  instance  in  the  iron  trade,  the  associa- 
tion practically  binds  its  members  to  fixed  prices  and 
wages.  So  that  in  this  very  iron  trade  this  competition 
of  the  employers  for  the  men  does  not  exist.  As  a 
last  resort  the  employers  will  compete  against  each 
other  for  the  workmen,  but  they  know  it  is  a  suicidal 
measure.  It  is  one  which  their  small  numbers,  superior 
foresight,  and  power  of  holding  over,  makes  them  able 
to  dispense  with  except  at  the  last  pinch.  And  it  is, 
therefore,  but  sparingly  employed.  In  all  North 
Staffordshire,  the  scene  of  the  late  iron  strike,  there 
are  said  to  be  but  six  firms,  and  those  are  in  close 
combination.  Is  it  likely  they  bid  against  each  other 
for  men  ? 

There  is  a  second  very  important  qualification,  also, 
which  neutralises  this  competition  of  the  capitalists 
with  each  other.  This  is  the  competition  of  the 
workmen  with  each  other.  Just  as,  if  left  quite  to 
itself,  there  may  be  a  tendency  amongst  employers 
to  raise  wages  by  bidding  against  each  other  for 
"  hands " ;  so  there  is  as  strong,  or  a  stronger, 
tendency  amongst  the  employed  to  lower  wages  by 
bidding  against  each  other  for  employment.  Some- 
times, if  markets  are  very  brisk,  capital  seeks  labour  ; 
but  more  often  in  this  country  labour  seeks  capital. 
With  our  redundant  population  and  our  vast  reserve 
of  labour-power  just  struggling  for  life — that  incubus 
of  destitute  and  unemployed  labour  which  lies  so 


324    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

heavily  on  all  efforts  of  our  artisans,  hungering  for 
their  places — the  common  state  of  things  is  that  of 
labourers  competing  for  employment. 

At  any  rate  competition  is  as  broad  as  it  is  long. 
What  the  employer  loses  by  it  when  business  is 
pressing,  he  gains  by  it  when  labour  is  plentiful. 
And  this  competition,  one  so  fluctuating  and  vast,  is 
outside  any  conceivable  combination  or  union  of  the 
men.  Nothing  can  prevent  the  dregs  or  Helotism  of 
labour  from  continually  underselling  it.  Surely  this 
use  of  competition  in  the  argument  is  thoroughly 
one-eyed.  We  are  told  that  for  the  workmen's 
protection  and  relief  against  low  wages,  oppression, 
or  sharp  practice,  there  is  the  great  compensator,  the 
competition  of  the  masters.  They  quite  overlook 
the  fact  that  this  is  at  least  counterbalanced  by  the 
competition  of  the  men.  Our  case  is  that  the  indi- 
vidual workman  has  to  struggle  incessantly  against 
this  competition — plus  the  position,  the  opportunities, 
the  waiting  and  reserve  power  which  his  capital  gives 
to  the  employer. 

Why,  it  is  asked,  is  the  puddler  more  at  the  mercy 
of  the  great  capitalist  than  the  farmer  is  at  the 
mercy  of  the  corn-dealer  ?  No  doubt  every  small 
capitalist  is  at  a  great  disadvantage  in  dealing  with  a 
very  great  capitalist.  But  the  disadvantage  of  the 
mere  day  workman  in  dealing  with  his  employer  is 
out  of  all  proportion  to  this.  The  seller  of  all  wares 
has  a  certain  stock,  a  certain  reserve  power,  a  capital 
of  some  kind,  which  by  the  conditions  of  his  existence 
the  day  labourer  has  not.  The  former  can  wait  at 
least  for  some  time ;  he  can  send  his  wares  from 
market  to  market.  To  the  mere  day  worker  it  is 
often  this  market  or  none — this  wage  or  none — lower 
rates  or  starvation.  Now  under  all  this  lies  the 
fundamental  fallacy  which  distorts  the  reasoning  of 


TRADES-UNIONISM  325 

many  capitalists  and  most  economists.     We  come,  in 
fact,  to   the  root  of  the   matter.     The  labourer  HAS 

NOT  GOT   A    THING   TO    SELL. 

The  labour  market,  as  it  is  called  by  an  unhappy 
figure,  is  in  reality  totally  unlike  the  produce  market. 
There  are  three  grand  features  in  which  labour  differs 
from  a  commodity.  Firstly,  every  seller  of  wares,  even 
a  hawker,  has  by  the  hypothesis  a  stock,  a  realised 
store,  a  portable  visible  thing — a  commodity.  If  he 
were  in  need  of  immediate  support — that  is,  wages — 
he  would  not  be  a  seller  or  trader  at  all.  The  trader 
is  necessarily  relieved  of  all  immediate  and  certainly 
of  all  physical  pressure  of  want.  The  difference  here 
between  j£ioo  and  nothing  is  infinite.  It  is  so 
difficult  to  persuade  millionaires  that  the  whole 
human  race  have  not  got  private  capitals  and  sums 
in  the  funds.  To  a  large  class  of  working  men, 
however,  it  is  a  daily  question  and  need — get  bread 
to-morrow,  or  die.  The  labourer  has  nothing  to  fall 
back  upon,  and  a  few  lost  hours  pull  him  down. 

In  the  second  place,  in  most  cases  the  seller  of  a 
commodity  can  send  it  or  carry  it  about  from  place  to 
place,  and  market  to  market,  with  perfect  ease.  He 
need  not  be  on  the  spot — he  generally  can  send  a 
sample  —  he  usually  treats  by  correspondence.  A 
merchant  sits  in  his  counting-house,  and  by  a  few 
letters  and  forms  transports  and  distributes  the  sub- 
sistence of  a  whole  city  from  continent  to  continent. 
In  other  cases,  as  the  shopkeeper,  the  ebb  and  flow  of 
passing  multitudes  supplies  the  want  of  locomotion  in 
his  wares.  His  customers  supply  the  locomotion  for 
him.  This  is  a  true  market.  Here  competition  acts 
rapidly,  fully,  simply,  and  fairly.  It  is  totally  other- 
wise with  a  day  labourer,  who  has  no  commodity  to 
sell.  He  must  be  himself  present  at  every  market — 
which  means  costly  personal  locomotion.  He  cannot 


326    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

correspond  with  his  employer ;  he  cannot  send  a 
sample  of  his  strength  ;  nor  do  employers  knock  at 
his  cottage  door.  This  is  not  a  market.  There  is 
but  one  true  labour  market :  where  the  negro  slave 
is  (or  rather  was)  sold  like  a  horse.  But  here,  as  in 
the  horse  fair,  the  bargain  is  not  made  with  the  negro 
or  the  horse,  but  with  the  trader  who  owns  them,  and 
who  is,  strictly  speaking,  a  merchant  freely  on  equal 
terms  disposing  of  a  commodity.  But  if  the  horse  or 
the  negro  came  to  sell  himself,  what  sort  of  bargain 
would  he  make,  starving  in  the  very  market  ?  In  a 
word,  there  is  no  real  market,  no  true  sale  of  a 
commodity,  where  vendor  and  wares  are  one  and  the 
same — and  that  one  a  man — totally  without  resources 
or  provisions  for  himself — with  the  wants  of  a  citizen, 
and  a  family  at  home. 

Thirdly  (and  this  is  the  important  point),  the 
labourer  has  not  got  a  commodity  to  sell,  because 
what  he  seeks  to  do  is  not  to  exchange  products,  but 
to  combine  to  produce.  When  buyer  and  seller  meet, 
in  market  or  out,  the  price  is  paid,  the  goods  change 
hands,  they  part,  the  contract  is  complete,  the  trans- 
action ends.  Even  where,  as  in  complex  dealings,  the 
bargain  is  prolonged,  it  is  a  dealing  in  specific  goods. 
It  is  not  the  formation  of  a  continuous  relation  which 
for  the  workman  at  least  absorbs  and  determines  his 
whole  life.  If  the  trader  fails  to  do  business  with  one 
customer,  he  turns  to  another.  The  business  over,  he 
leaves  him,  perhaps  for  ever.  In  any  case  the  contract 
is  a  contract  for  the  sale  (i.e.  simple  transfer)  of  one 
specific  thing.  How  totally  different  is  this  from  the 
relations  of  employer  and  employed.  This  is  permanent, 
or  rather  continuous — it  involves  the  entire  existence 
of  one  at  least — it  implies  sustained  co-operation. 
This  is  no  contract  to  sell  something,  it  is  the  contract 
to  do  something,  it  is  a  contract  of  partnership  or 


TRADES-UNIONISM  327 

joint  activity,  it  is  an  association  involving  every  side 
of  life.  The  workman  must  live  close  to  his  work, 
his  hours  must  conform  to  it ;  the  arrangement  of  his 
household,  his  wife's  duties  and  occupations,  his  home 
in  every  detail,  are  wholly  dependent  on  the  terms  and 
conditions  of  this  work.  The  person  by  whom  he  is 
employed,  and  certainly  the  class  of  employers,  can 
affect  him  for  good  or  evil  in  the  most  constant  or 
vital  manner.  His  whole  comfort,  peace,  and  success 
— very  often  his  health — under  the  factory  system, 
usually  his  dwelling,  are  in  the  hands  of  this  same 
employer.  By  a  series  of  small  arrangements,  difficult 
to  follow  in  detail,  this  employer  can  make  his  position 
satisfactory  or  intolerable. 

Nothing  is  more  fallacious  than  to  call  labour 
questions  simply  a  matter  of  wages  or  money.  Quite 
apart  from  the  price  of  the  labour,  there  are  in  most 
trades  a  multitude  of  conditions  and  circumstances 
which  make  the  whole  difference  to  the  well-being  of 
the  workmen.  Do  men  know,  for  instance,  the  life 
of  a  London  bricklayer,  who  changes  his  lodging  often 
once  a  quarter,  and  often  walks  six  miles  before  he 
begins  his  ten-hour  day  at  six  o'clock  ?  Every  time 
he  has  to  change  his  employer  (who  at  most,  on  his 
side,  has  to  wait  till  he  gets  another  man),  the  work- 
man has  to  give  up  his  home,  break  up  his  household, 
separate  from  his  wife,  draw  his  children  from  school, 
and  suffer  infinite  differences  affecting  his  comfort, 
health,  and  plans.  A  few  weeks  out  of  work  may 
ruin  the  prospects  of  his  son,  injure  his  family's 
health,  turn  them  out  of  a  familiar  home,  and  change 
him  to  a  broken  man.  Let  us  remember  that  this 
competition  implies  the  constant  locomotion  of  families. 
And  then  let  us  trace  out  the  moral  and  mental  con- 
sequences of  this  chance  life.  Even  in  the  higher 
branches  an  artisan  family  lead  a  frightfully  nomad 


328   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

existence.  Any  one  who  has  known  working  men  in 
their  homes  must  have  been  painfully  struck  with  the 
difficulty  of  tracing  them  after  a  few  months.  What 
would  be  the  feeling  of  our  middle  classes  to  be  subject 
to  a  similar  competition — a  competition  not  confined 
to  their  warehouses,  and  affecting  only  their  balance- 
sheet,  but  one  which  tossed  about  their  homes  like 
counters,  brought  them  now  and  then  to  the  gate  of 
the  workhouse,  and  rode  at  random  over  every  detail 
of  their  lives  ? 

Much  of  this  is  of  course  inevitable.  It  is  a  life 
which  happily  has  its  compensations.  But  what  con- 
cerns us  now  is  to  see  how  utterly  different  is  this 
state  of  things  from  the  selling  of  a  commodity. 
What  sale  of  a  commodity  affects  this  complex  net- 
work of  human  relations  ?  It  would  be  as  right  to 
speak  of  every  trader  needing  a  partner,  every  woman 
ready  for  marriage,  every  applicant  for  a  post  of  trust, 
as  having  a  commodity  to  sell.  The  followers  of 
Napoleon  and  Garibaldi  were  not  simply  men  having 
a  commodity  to  sell.  The  engagement  of  a  workman 
for  hire  is,  as  completely  as  these  cases  are,  an  instance 
of  a  voluntary  combination  of  energies  and  capacities. 
The  union  of  capitalist  and  labourers  is,  in  the  highest 
sense,  a  partnership  involving  a  real  equality  of  duties 
and  powers, — they  finding  the  strength,  the  patience, 
the  manual  skill,  the  physical  exhaustion, — he  finding 
the  management,  the  machinery,  the  immediate  means 
of  subsistence,  and,  by  rights,  the  protection  of  all 
kinds.  He  and  they  are  as  necessary  to  each  other  as 
men  in  any  relation  of  life.  They  can  affect  each 
other  as  intimately  for  good  and  for  bad  as  can  any 
partners  whatever.  The  dignity  of  their  work  and 
lives  rests  in  their  knowing  and  performing  their 
mutual  duties  and  their  common  tasks.  Applied  to 
this  noble  and  intimate  relation  of  life — this  grand 


TRADES-UNIONISM  329 

institution  of  society — the  language  of  the  market  or 
of  barter  is  a  cruel  and  senseless  cant.  Nor  will  any 
sound  condition  of  labour  exist  until  the  captains  of 
Industry  come  to  feel  themselves  to  be  life-long  fellow- 
soldiers  with  the  lowest  fighter  in  the  Battle  of  Labour, 
and  have  ceased  to  speak  of  themselves  as  speculators 
who  go  into  one  market  to  buy  fifty  shillings'  worth 
of  pig-iron,  and  into  another  to  buy  fifty  shillings' 
worth  of  puddling. 

It  is  essentially  for  this  sort  of  protection  that 
Unionism  is  devised.  Any  one  who  regards  it  as  a 
simple  instrument  to  raise  wages  is,  as  Adam  Smith 
says,  "as  ignorant  of  the  subject  as  of  human  nature." 
Unionism,  above  all,  aims  at  making  regular,  even,  and 
safe  the  workman's  life.  No  one  who  had  not  speci- 
ally studied  it  would  conceive  the  vast  array  of  grievances 
against  which  Unionism  and  strikes  are  directed.  If 
we  looked  only  to  that  side  of  the  question,  we  should 
come  to  fancy  that  from  the  whole  field  of  labour 
there  went  up  one  universal  protest  against  injustice. 
There  is  a  "  miserable  monotony "  of  wrong  and 
suffering  in  it.  Excessive  labour,  irregular  labour, 
spasmodic  overwork,  spasmodic  locking -out,  "over- 
time," "short  time,"  double  time,  night  work,  Sunday 
work,  truck  in  every  form,  overlookers'  extortion, 
payment  in  kind,  wages  reduced  by  drawbacks,  "long 
pays,"  or  wages  held  back,  fines,  confiscations,  rent 
and  implements  irregularly  stopped  out  of  wages, 
evictions  from  tenements,  "  black  lists "  of  men, 
short  weights,  false  reckoning,  forfeits,  children's 
labour,  women's  labour,  unhealthy  labour,  deadly 
factories  and  processes,  unguarded  machinery,  defective 
machinery,  preventible  accidents,  recklessness  from 
desire  to  save, — in  countless  ways  we  find  a  waste  of 
human  life,  health,  well-being,  and  power,  which  are  not 
represented  in  the  ledgers  or  allowed  for  in  bargains. 


330     NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Let  any  one  read  such  a  Blue-book  as  that  on  the 
employment  of  children,  which  contains  much  on  labour 
generally.  It  reads  like  one  long  catalogue  of  oppres- 
sion. Every  practice  which  can  ruin  body  and  spirit, 
— every  form  of  ignorance,  disease,  degradation,  and 
destitution  comes  up  in  turn.  The  higher  trades,  as 
that  of  the  iron-workers,  are  free  from  many  of  these, 
from  most  of  them,  but  overwork  and  truck  and 
forfeits.  But  take  the  records  of  any  trade,  and  it 
will  furnish  a  dark  catalogue  of  struggles  about  one  or 
more  of  these  grievances.  Take  the  Reports  of  the 
Medical  Inspectors  to  the  Privy  Council,  of  the 
Inspectors  of  Mines  and  certain  classes  of  factories,  or 
that  of  the  Staffordshire  potteries.  Take  the  Report 
of  the  Miners'  Association  often  cited.  It  reads  like 
one  long  indictment  against  the  recklessness  of  capital 
and  the  torpidity  of  the  legislature.  It  is  not  that 
each  individual  capitalist  produces  or  even  knows  such 
things.  Not  he,  but  the  system  is  at  fault.  The 
wrong  each  man  does  is  not  great, — that  which  he 
does  intentionally  is  very  small.  But  as  a  body  they 
all  work  out  this  one  end  blindly  ;  for  a  sophistical 
jargon,  falsely  called  Economic  Science,  has  trained 
them  to  think  that  fifty  shillings'  worth  of  puddling — 
that  is,  the  lives  of  men,  women,  and  children — should 
be  bought  and  sold  in  market  overt,  like  pigs  and  bars 
of  iron. 

Against  this  state  of  things,  as  yet,  the  only 
organised  protection  is  Unionism.  It  is  a  system 
at  bottom  truly  conservative,  mainly  protective,  and 
essentially  legal.  It  is  a  system  still  quite  undeveloped, 
and  most  defective,  and  often  deeply  corrupted.  But 
it  is  one,  it  must  be  remembered,  which  has  as  yet  no 
fair  chance.  It  is  proscribed  by  the  legislature,  and 
as  yet  unrecognised.  What  prospect  is  there  of  these 
institutions  being  healthy,  well  managed,  and  moderate, 


TRADES-UNIONISM  331 

whilst  they  cannot  get  the  legal  sanction  which  the 
humblest  association  obtains  ?  They  can  hold  no 
property,  bring  no  action,  have  no  assistance  or  pro- 
tection from  the  law.  Just  as  under  the  old  Com- 
bination Laws  strikes  were  often  thoroughly  evil  in 
their  action,  so  now  under  the  Association  Laws 
unions  are  forced  into  the  attitude  of  conspiracies. 
These  evils  are  mainly  due  to  the  craven  injustice 
shown  to  them  by  Parliaments  of  employers.  But 
even  now  they  are,  in  the  main,  moderately,  honestly, 
and  wisely  directed.  Their  managers  are  sometimes 
dishonest  adventurers ;  their  system  is  sometimes 
corrupt  ;  but  there  is  not  a  tenth  of  the  corruption  of 
our  ordinary  railway  and  joint-stock  company  system. 
Sometimes,  however,  they  are  models  of  good  govern- 
ment. Occasionally  they  call  out  men  of  the  finest 
and  noblest  political  instincts,  men  cast  in  the  very 
mould  of  Hampden. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  discuss  at  length  their 
great  deficiencies  ;  but  no  man  is  more  aware  how  far 
they  fall  short  of  what  is  wanted  than  the  present 
writer.  In  the  first  place,  they  are  simply  a  political, 
practical,  temporary  remedy  for  a  social  and  moral 
evil.  The  real  cause  of  all  industrial  evils  is  the  want 
of  a  higher  moral  spirit  in  all  engaged  in  industry 
alike.  Social  and  moral  remedies  alone,  in  the  long 
run,  can  change  the  state  of  things  to  health  ;  and 
the  working  men  on  their  side  have  as  much  to  learn 
in  social  and  moral  duty  as  their  employers.  All  this 
(and  without  it  nothing  permanent  can  be  gained) 
Unionism  totally  ignores,  and  even  tends  to  conceal 
and  choke.  Hence  a  keen  spirit  of  Unionism  often 
blunts  the  members  of  a  strong  association  to  their 
own  duties  and  to  the  higher  wants  of  their  class.  If 
small,  the  association  too  often  fosters  a  narrow,  some- 
times a  most  selfish  spirit.  Often  it  fosters  a  dull 


332    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

temper  of  indifference  and  comfortable  disregard  of  all 
others  around.  It  often  encourages  the  combative 
spirit  and  a  love  of  visible  triumph.  Occasionally,  as 
at  Sheffield,  it  develops  cruel  tyranny.  Above  all,  it 
seriously  divides  trade  from  trade,  skilled  workmen 
from  unskilled,  unionist  from  non-unionist. 

These,  however,  are  all  evils  not  so  much  inherent 
in  the  nature  of  unions  as  caused  by  their  want  of 
permanent  and  legal  position,  public  recognition, 
larger  extension,  wider  combination,  and  higher  educa- 
tion. The  grand  evil  inherent  in  their  nature  is  that 
they  are  simply  political  expedients,  and  share  all  the 
defects  of  political  remedies  applied  to  social  diseases. 
Still,  if  Reform  Leagues  and  constitutional  agitation, 
or,  in  the  last  resort,  organised  resistance  to  oppression, 
do  not  cure  the  maladies  of  the  state,  they  are  essen- 
tially necessary — and,  sometimes,  are  the  first  necessity. 
To  save  the  people  from  the  immediate  injuries  of 
bad  government  is  sometimes  the  very  condition  of 
all  other  effort  towards  improvement.  If  working 
men,  holding  by  their  union  for  simply  protective 
purposes,  would  turn  towards  other  measures  to  im- 
prove themselves,  to  learn  greater  self-control,  higher 
education,  and  purer  domestic  life,  their  ends  would 
be  gained.  In  the  meantime,  as  a  step  to  them,  as 
giving  a  breathing  time  and  support,  Unionism  is 
indispensable.  To  consolidate  and  elevate  it  is, 
perhaps,  the  working  man's  first  duty.  For  in  the 
midst  of  the  increasing  power  and  recklessness  of 
capital  one  can  see  no  immediate  safeguard  but  this 
against  the  ruin  of  the  workman's  life,  his  annihila- 
tion as  a  member  of  society — against  the  consequent 
deterioration  of  the  community,  and  ultimate  social 
revolution. 


Ill 

INDUSTRIAL   CO-OPERATION 

(1865) 

From  the  year  1860  I  was  associated  with  some  of  the 
most  ardent  apostles  of  the  Co-operative  Movement,  such 
as  Thomas  Hughes,  J.  Malcolm  Ludlow,  Lloyd  Jones, 
Dr.  Furnivall,  and  G.  J.  Holyoake ;  and  I  shared 
their  interest  and  hopes  for  the  new  schemes.  With 
introductions  from  them  and  many  friends  in  the  North, 
I  visited  the  Pioneers  in  Rochdale,  and  attended  many 
Co-operative  committees  and  meetings  in  Lancashire  and 
Yorkshire.  Having  personal  knowledge  of  the  leaders 
and  their  methods,  and  having  made  a  study  of  their 
printed  Rules,  Tables,  and  Balance-sheets,  1  had  ample 
means  of  forming  an  estimate  of  their  work  and  prospects. 
I  saw  that,  whilst  the  system  of '•'•Distributive  Stores  " 
was  a  real  success  and  was  destined  to  a  great  develop- 
ment both  material  and  social,  the  attempt  to  found 
Co-operative  Production  for  the  general  market  was  a 
petty  and  unstable  incident  which  could  have  no  future. 
And  I  saw  that  the  hope  of  those  who  looked  for 
Co-operative  Production  to  reorganise  the  conditions 
of  Labour  was  an  idle  dream.  Co-operation  could  do 
nothing  to  supersede  or  even  to  reform  the  current 
system  of  Wages-earning. 

I  made  bold  to  tell  this  to  my  friends.  More  than 
forty  years  have  passed ;  and,  whilst  the  "Stores"  have 
had  a  marvellous  growth,  "  Production  "  in  the  open  market 

333 


334    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

is  still  a  drop  in  the  ocean  of  Labour.  "  Co-operation  " 
has  taught  more  than  two  millions  of  working  people  to 
supply  themselves  with  necessaries  in  methods  of  strict 
economy  and  thrift.  It  has  not  enabled  the  mass  of  the 
proletariat  to  mend  the  conditions  of  Labour  by  more 
than  a  hair's  breadth.  On  the  contrary  it  only  draws 
off  some  admirable  men  from  turning  to  deeper  and 
wiser  means  of  salvation. 

The  "  Stores  "  have  continued  to  double  their  numbers 
and  their  business  with  every  decade.  For  independent 
"  Production"  i.e.  manufactures  sold  to  other  than 
"  Co-operators"  the  result  is  infinitesimal.  And  as  to 
"  Co-operative  Production  "  benefiting  workmen  who  are 
not  shareholders  or  members,  the  result  is  a  pitiable 
minimum. 

The  excellent  account  in  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica, 
vol.  xxvii.,  by  Mr.  Aneurin  Williams  {1902},  which 
gives  a  total  business  of  more  than  75  millions,  sets  down 
the  profits  of  Productive  Societies  at  £158,315 — and  a 
Dividend  on  Wages  of  £20,545 — and  that  is  on  a  trade 
of  three  millions  and  a  half. 

The  latest  work  on  Co-operative  Industry  that  I 
have  seen  is  by  Ernest  Ames  (1907).  He  tells  us  in 
his  chapter  on  the  Productive  Societies  that  "  the  position 
of  Labour  is  very  similar  to  that  which  is  found  in 
ordinary  well  and  considerately  managed  centres  of 
industry"  Again  he  adds :  "  Labour  is  left  by  the 
great  bulk  of  modern  co-operative  enterprise  in  an  un- 
changed economic  relationship?  That  is  exactly  the 
warning  I  gave  in  1865  to  my  friends,  the  Cc-operators ; 
and  it  is  sad  to  relate  the  disappointment  of  such  high  and 
worthy  hopes  (1908). 


"  Let  us  abandon  all  useless  and  irritating  discussion  as  to 
the  origin  and  distribution  of  wealth,  and  proceed  at  once 
to  establish  the  moral  rules  which  should  regulate  it  as  a 
social  function" — AUGUSTS  COMTE. 

Two   serious    attempts   to   raise   their   condition    are 


INDUSTRIAL  CO-OPERATION       335 

being  made  by  the  working  classes  from  their  own 
spontaneous  efforts.  Both  have  been  conceived, 
elaborated,  and  maintained  by  their  unaided  instinct. 
One  of  these — Unionism — has  been  abundantly  dis- 
cussed. The  other  is  Co-operation.  The  first  is  the 
political,  direct,  immediate  remedy  for  industrial 
wants.  The  second  is  more  nearly  the  social,  gradual, 
and  indirect  process.  Unionism  is  an  open  and 
organised  resistance ;  and,  pushed  to  the  extreme, 
approaches  to  political  insurrection.  Co-operation  is 
an  effort  towards  social  reform,  and  in  its  type  verges 
on  social  revolution.  Both  have  played,  and  are 
destined  to  play,  a  large  part  in  the  progress  of 
industry.  Each  maintains  most  valuable  truths  and 
attains  many  excellent  results.  Both  are  of  the 
deepest  interest  to  the  social  inquirer.  Each,  how- 
ever, is  imperfect  and  somewhat  one-sided.  Each 
ignores  the  very  important  side  which  the  other 
represents.  To  estimate  them  truly  they  must  be 
viewed  at  the  same  glance  and  judged  by  comparison. 
In  dealing  with  co-operation,  it  is  happily  possible 
to  speak  in  a  much  more  judicial  and  critical  spirit 
than  it  is  in  speaking  of  unionism.  Trades-unions 
have  been  the  object  of  so  much  ignorant  abuse,  that 
a  friendly  writer  is  forced  into  an  attitude  of  contro- 
versy and  almost  of  advocacy.  With  co-operation,  it 
is  very  desirable  that  its  weak  side  should  be  insisted 
on  at  least  as  fully  as  its  strongest.  Its  partisans  and 
even  the  public  are  rather  inclined  to  exaggerate  its 
importance.  During  Elections  one  sees  many 
candidates  on  both  sides,  who  guard  themselves  from 
betraying  many  definite  opinions,  loudly  proclaim 
themselves  in  favour  of  "co-operation."  Doubtless 
it  would  have  been  as  much  to  the  purpose  to  pro- 
claim themselves  staunch  adherents  of  the  penny  post, 
or  ardent  friends  of  the  half-holiday  movement.  Of 


336    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

course,  as  the  Legislature  has,  and  can  have,  nothing 
to  do  with  co-operation,  it  was  totally  out  of  place 
in  candidates'  addresses.  And  many  of  them  would 
have  shrunk  from  the  great  revolution  which  "co- 
operation "  really  is  in  the  minds  of  its  most  active 
apostles.  This,  however,  proved  that  it  is  considered 
a  safe  thing  to  profess  ;  and  serves  to  indicate  interest 
in  social  questions.  But  as  it  is  beset  by  no  prejudices 
whatever,  it  is  only  right  that  its  value  and  its  defects 
be  impartially  brought  out ;  and  that  its  adherents 
may  not  mislead  themselves  as  to  its  promises. 

This  inquiry  is  specially  opportune,  as  the 
annual  return  of  the  Registrar  of  Friendly  Societies  is 
now  before  us,  and  we  are  able  to  take  stock  of  the 
co-operative  movement  from  official  authority.  On 
the  3  ist  of  December  1864  there  were,  according  to 
this  return,  505  registered  societies  spread  over  almost 
the  whole  of  England,  in  town,  village,  and  county. 
The  total  number  of  members  (several  returns  being 
defective)  is  129,761,  the  share  capital  is  £685,072, 
the  loan  capital  is  £89,423,  the  assets  and  property 
amount  to  £891,775,  the  business  done  in  the  year  is 
£2,742,957,  and  the  profit  realised  is  £225,569^ 
As  no  societies  neglected  to  send  returns,  these 
figures  would  probably  need  to  be  corrected  by  an 
addition  of  10  or  15  per  cent.  These  societies  are  all, 
with  very  few  exceptions  (almost  all  of  which  decline 
to  send  returns),  "stores"  for  the  sale  of  food  and 
clothing.  The  average  profit,  it  will  be  seen,  amounts 
to  something  like  9  per  cent  (in  one  case  it  is  25  per 
cent)  on  the  business  done,  and  something  like  30 
per  cent  (in  some  cases  50  per  cent)  on  the  share  and 
loan  capital.  Only  thirteen  of  the  395  societies  that 

1  This  has  been  enormously  increased.  The  members  are  now  in 
excess  of  two  millions.  The  capital  is  nearly  30  millions  sterling  and 
the  business  75  millions  sterling  (1908). 


INDUSTRIAL  CO-OPERATION       337 

make  returns  fail  to  show  a  profit,  and  these  are,  with 
one  notable  exception,  very  small  or  young  companies 
commencing  operations.  The  profit  may  be  taken  as 
enough  to  pay  a  dividend  of  is.  yd.  in  the  pound  upon 
all  purchases  after  payment  of  expenses,  gifts,  deprecia- 
tion, and  ^5  per  cent  interest  on  shares  and  loans. 
Many  of  the  principal  societies  far  exceed  this,  and 
the  famous  Pioneers  (by  no  means  a  single  instance), 
after  providing  for  interest  on  loans  and  shares,  educa- 
tional fund,  reserve  fund,  depreciation  fund,  and 
charity,  still  paid  last  quarter  2s.  4d.  in  the  pound  on 
members'  purchases.  A  return  this  which  railway 
shareholders  might  study  with  profit,  if  not  with 
satisfaction  ! 

This  success,  however,  which  can  be  measured  by 
tabular  statements,  is  far  the  smallest  portion.  The 
indirect  effect  of  co-operation  which  cannot  be 
reduced  to  figures  is  vast  and  pervading.  In  a  northern 
city  which  had  long  suffered  from  adulterated  flour,  a 
co-operative  flour-mill  was  established.  It  not  only 
supplied  a  perfectly  pure  article  to  its  own  large  body 
of  members  and  customers,  but  (in  order  to  stand  their 
ground)  the  other  mills  of  the  city  were  obliged  to  do 
the  same.  The  first  thing  that  a  well-managed  and 
extensive  store  does  in  a  town  is  to  destroy  a  number 
of  useless  and  dishonest  shops  all  round  the  neigh- 
bourhood, the  second  is  visibly  to  reduce  destitution 
and  the  poor-rates,  the  third,  where  it  is  very  strong, 
is  to  diminish  strikes  and  sensibly  improve  wages. 
Whatever  stirs  the  active  and  resolute  spirits  of  a 
district  to  fresh  union,  patience,  and  self-denial,  and 
gives  them  a  considerable  common  fund  and  puts  a 
small  sum  at  the  free  disposal  of  each,  at  once  raises  their 
tone  and  makes  them  independent  of  instant  necessities. 
And  the  change  is  one  which  in  different  ways,  but 
with  equal  distinctness,  makes  itself  felt  by  the  em- 


338    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

ployer,  the  clergyman,  the  schoolmaster,  the  publican, 
and  the  policeman. 

The  case  of  Rochdale  is  naturally  the  most  striking 
that  can  be  taken.  There  the  Pioneers  Society  alone 
now  numbers  5200  members,  with  a  capital  of  £j  1,000, 
and  an  annual  business  of  ^200,000.  Associated  with 
it  is  the  Corn-mill  Society  and  the  Cotton  Manu- 
facturing Company,  both  owned  and  worked  principally 
by  the  same  class.  The  effect  of  this  movement  on 
the  town  is  most  obvious.  During  the  worst  times  of 
the  cotton  distress  the  Pioneers  was  unshaken.  The 
material  prosperity  and  well-being  of  the  whole  town 
has  received  an  impetus  from  it.  The  "  store "  has 
affected  for  good  the  moral,  intellectual,  and  industrial 
tone  of  a  large  city.  Its  mere  existence  is  sufficient 
to  make  it  almost  secured  against  either  great  de- 
moralisation or  great  destitution.  The  importance 
of  this  work  is  recognised  by  all  classes  of  the  in- 
habitants. There  have  been  no  more  zealous  friends 
of  the  movement  than  the  clergy,  many  of  the  muni- 
cipal officers,  and  both  the  late  and  the  present  repre- 
sentative in  Parliament.  The  Rochdale  movement, 
which  dates  from  1844,  owes  its  origin  and  its  success 
to  a  knot  of  men  of  very  remarkable  character  and 
ability.  There  were  amongst  the  founders  some  men 
of  real  mercantile  genius — men  who  might  have  made 
their  own  fortunes  ten  times  over — which  they  united 
with  the  power  of  inspiring  and  directing  their 
fellows.  Some  of  them  are  still  at  their  post  at  Roch- 
dale, rich  in  nothing  but  the  gratitude  and  esteem  of 
their  fellow-citizens,  for  whilst  they  might  easily  have 
raised  themselves  amongst  the  great  millionaires  of 
Lancashire  they  were  contented  with  giving  prosperity 
to  a  city  and  new  energy  to  the  working  classes  of 
England. 

The  effect  of  a  very  flourishing  store,  and  even  of 


INDUSTRIAL  CO-OPERATION       339 

a  small  manufacturing  society,  in  one  of  the  northern 
valleys,  where  factories  are  more  or  less  shut  off  from 
free  correspondence  with  the  neighbourhood,  is  to 
produce  a  very  perceptible  rise  of  wages  ;  the  society, 
either  as  a  bank,  or  as  an  employer,  often  as  both, 
forms  a  reserve,  on  which  the  workman  can  fall  back 
if  dismissed.  But  of  course  this  result  is  only  visible 
when  isolation  or  local  circumstances  enable  a  single 
society  to  make  itself  felt.  Another  immediate  effect 
is  that  of  the  ready-money  system,  which  is  universally 
and  very  strictly  enforced  at  the  co-operative  shops. 
They  form  also  the  most  complete  and  valuable  savings- 
bank —  the  saving  being  effected  continually  upon 
every  daily  purchase,  retained  out  of  the  immediate 
control  of  the  investor,  and  usually  unperceived  by 
him.  Thus  a  member  of  the  Rochdale  store,  upon 
every  pound  of  tea  or  piece  of  bacon  which  he  buys, 
drops  about  twelve  per  cent  of  the  price  (the  ordinary 
retailer's  profit)  into  his  money-box,  which  at  the  end 
of  the  year  comes  out  a  respectable  sum.  This  process 
is  locally  embodied  in  the  formula,  "the  more  one 
eats  the  more  one  gets."  A  species  of  savings-bank 
with  which  no  other  can  remotely  compare  !  Adul- 
teration in  goods  is  almost  invariably  and  completely 
checked  by  a  store.  Without  exception,  they  may  be 
said  to  sell  perfectly  sound  and  fair  goods ;  and 
multitudes  of  working  people,  who  never  knew  the 
taste  of  pure  tea  or  coffee,  or  wholesome  bread  or  flour, 
have  become  very  sharp  critics  as  to  quality,  for  they 
purchase  wholesale,  by  their  agents,  the  very  best 
which  the  markets  offer. 

No  reasonable  observer,  however,  can  imagine  that 
accumulating  savings,  avoiding  debt,  obtaining  good 
and  cheap  food,  or  the  "making  a  pound  go  a  long 
way,"  is  the  sole  feature,  though  it  is  the  main  feature, 
of  the  co-operative  system.  Co-operation  now  numbers 


340    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

a  large  and  highly  organised  band  of  propagandists. 
It  forms  a  new  "  persuasion  "  in  itself,  with  all  the 
machinery  and  enthusiasm  of  a  religious  sect.  There 
are  men  who  devote  themselves  to  preach  and  extend 
co-operation,  just  as  there  are  men  who  devote  them- 
selves to  awakening  souls  or  advocating  temperance. 
In  every  society  there  are  men  who  give  their  time, 
labour,  and  often  the  savings  of  their  lives,  to  found 
and  establish  a  new  "store"  or  to  bring  their  neigh- 
bours to  look  on  the  system  as  a  vital  truth.  The 
"  pledge,"  the  abolition  of  slavery,  free  trade,  and 
"Bible  religion,"  have  never  been  preached  with  more 
systematic  activity  than  this  has.  It  has  its  organ,  its 
lectures,  its  "conferences,"  its  dogmas,  its  celebra- 
tions, and  it  would  not  be  an  English  institution  if  it 
had  not  its  testimonials  and  its  subscription  funds. 

It  has  developed  a  style  of  thought  and  speech  which 
is  strangely  akin  to  that  of  a  religious  movement,  and 
in  co-operation  tracts  the  system  is  expounded  in  phrases 
which  are  in  familiar  use  with  reference  to  sacred 
subjects.  The  nucleus  of  many  a  flourishing  society 
consists  of  men  who  have  a  strong  impulse  for  social 
improvement,  and  whose  motives  are  at  least  as  strongly 
the  benefit  of  their  fellows  as  that  of  themselves.  No 
one  can  read  the  Co-operator  regularly  without  seeing 
that  it  records  a  movement  in  which  some  of  the  finest 
characters  and  spirits  amongst  the  working  classes, 
from  one  end  of  England  to  the  other,  are  absorbed  ; 
without  admiring  the  energy,  perseverance,  sagacity, 
and  conscientiousness  which  these  efforts  display ; 
without  learning  to  respect  the  spirit  of  union,  faith, 
and  self-sacrifice  which  they  frequently  exert.  The 
constant  acts  of  benevolence,  of  unflinching  patience, 
and  of  well-deserved  confidence,  with  which  co-opera- 
tive records  are  full,  are  truly  touching.  Co-operative 
poetry  alone  forms  a  literature  in  itself;  and  in  the 


INDUSTRIAL  CO-OPERATION       341 

Co-operator's  pages  one  may  often  read  a  piece  full  of 
terse,  vigorous  lines,  which,  if  not  exactly  a  poem, 
is  eloquent  versification.  Nor  can  any  man  of  feeling 
or  discernment  witness  a  really  worthy  co-operative 
celebration  —  see  those  Lancashire  or  Yorkshire 
workmen,  with  their  wives  and  children,  meet  in  their 
own  hall,  surrounded  by  their  own  property,  to  con- 
sider their  own  affairs — hear  them  join  in  singing, 
sometimes  a  psalm,  sometimes  a  chorus — listen  to  the 
homely  wit,  the  prudent  advice,  the  stirring  appeal,  and 
feel  the  spirit  of  goodwill,  conviction,  and  resolution 
in  which  they  are  met  to  celebrate,  as  it  were,  their 
escape  from  Egyptian  bondage, — no  one,  if  present  at 
such  a  meeting,  can  fail  to  recognise  that  co-operation, 
if  not  a  moral  or  social  movement  in  itself,  has  had  the 
benefit  of  many  high,  moral,  and  social  tendencies  to 
stimulate  and  foster  it. 

The  best  testimony  for  co-operation,  in  its  form  of 
the  "store"  system,  is  this — that  in  every  leading 
town,  men  recognised  as  the  most  able,  conscientious, 
and  energetic  of  their  order  amongst  the  working 
classes,  will  generally  be  found  active  supporters  of  the 
"  store "  j  and  those  amongst  the  independent  and 
educated  classes  who  sympathise  most  earnestly  and 
wisely  with  the  welfare  of  the  working  classes,  will  be 
found  to  acknowledge  its  claims  and  services.  No 
man  of  generous  feeling  can  help  being  moved  to 
admiration  when  he  recalls  the  homes  which  have 
been  saved  and  brightened ;  the  weight  of  debt, 
friendlessness,  destitution,  and  bad  habits  which  have 
been  relieved  ;  the  hope  and  spirit  which  have  been 
infused  into  the  working  classes  by  this  single  agency 
— the  co-operative  system.  It  has  come  successfully 
through  the  trial  of  the  cotton  distress  ;  it  is  spreading 
into  every  corner,  even  every  rural  village  in  England, 
and  is  firmly  established  in  Germany  and  France. 


342    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

It  is  precisely  the  great  influence  which  co-operation 
now  exercises,  and  the  very  high  qualities  which  are 
devoted  to  its  extension,  that  render  it  the  more 
essential  to  examine,  it  closely — to  know  exactly  what 
it  can  and  what -it  cannot  do — what  are  its  defects 
and  its  dangers.  The  men  who  have  founded  and 
support  these  institutions  are  far  too  straightforward 
and  resolute  to  fear  any  honest  judgment  upon  their 
efforts.  The  last  thing  that  they  would  choose  would  be 
any  attempt  to  shut  out  the  truth  from  themselves,  or 
any  one  else,  respecting  the  system  ;  and  once  con- 
vinced of  the  fairness  and  goodwill  of  the  counsellor  or 
critic,  they  will  attend  to  genuine  counsel  or  criticism 
with  patience  and  impartiality.  In  this  spirit  the  fol- 
lowing remarks  are  offered  by  one  who  has  more  than 
a  mere  goodwill  for  the  movement  in  its  legitimate 
sphere,  and  as  a  material  expedient ;  who  has  a  strong 
esteem  and  sympathy  for  it,  its  objects  and  its 
adherents  ;  who  recognises  in  it  and  them  some  of  the 
very  best  grounds  of  hope  now  extant ;  and  who 
desires  only  to  define  somewhat  more  closely  the  true 
scope  and  limits  of  co-operation. 

Let  us  come  at  once  to  the  key  of  the  whole 
position.  Co-operation,  it  is  usually  said,  is  designed 
to  elevate  the  condition  of  labour  by  associating  capital 
with  labour,  and  by  giving  to  labour  an  equal  interest 
with  capital  in  the  results  of  production.  It  is  also 
said  (and  with  truth)  to  be  in  a  flourishing  condition, 
and  to  have  firm  ground  to  rest  on.  Now  what  is 
the  case  actually  ?  Flourishing  as  co-operation  clearly 
is  in  a  pecuniary  sense  (with  the  exception  of  a  very 
small  number  of  manufacturing  societies  to  be  noticed 
presently),  the  whole  of  the  co-operative  societies 
throughout  the  kingdom  are  simply  "stores,"  i.e.  shops 
for  the  sale  of  food,  arid  sometimes  clothing.  These, 
of  course,  cannot  affect  the  condition  of  industry 


INDUSTRIAL  CO-OPERATION       343 

materially.  Labour  here  does  not  in  any  sense  share 
in  the  produce  with  capital.  The  relation  of  employer 
and  employed  remains  just  the  same,  and  not  a  single 
workman  would  change  the  conditions  of  his  employ- 
ment if  the  store  were  to  extinguish  all  the  shops  of  a 
town. 

In  such  an  extreme  case,  the  workmen  would  still 
be  hired  for  wages  in  the  ordinary  competition  of 
labour,  for  the  shops  do  not  employ  any  of  them.  The 
cloth,  flour,  tea,  and  meat  which  the  store  now 
supplies.,  have  all  been  made  under  the  same  conditions 
as  before,  and  are  simply  purchased  in  open  market 
in  the  ordinary  way.  The  cotton  goods  sold  at  the 
store  have  probably  been  grown  by  the  labour  of 
negroes,  and  manufactured  under  the  hardest  rule 
of  competition.  If  co-operation  (so  far  as  the  stores 
are  concerned)  were  developed  to  a  point  beyond  the 
wildest  dreams  of  its  friends  ;  if  it  absorbed  the  entire 
retail  trade  of  the  country,  and  there  were  no  such 
thing  as  a  shop  left  for  rich  or  poor,  it  would  still,  for 
any  direct  effect  it  has,  leave  the  "  labour  market " 
just  where  it  found  it,  for  not  a  single  article  would  be 
produced  (though  all  would  be  distributed)  in  a  different 
way  from  heretofore.  Hence  a  "store"  as  such, 
does  not  affect  the  true  labour  question  directly.  So 
that  what  we  mean  when  we  say  that  "  co-operation  " 
is  a  great  movement,  is  that  working  men  have 
devised  a  highly  convenient  and  economic  plan  of 
buying  their  food  and  part  of  their  clothing. 

No  doubt  there  is  the  whole  indirect  effect  of  this 
system,  the  freedom  from  debt,  the  accumulation  of 
saving,  the  business  experience,  and  all  the  countless 
other  advantages  which  we  have  set  forth  and  urged 
in  preceding  pages.  No  one  can  overlook  them,  and 
scarcely  can  exaggerate  them.  But  these  are  in  them- 
selves purely  economic  arrangements  of  practical  con- 


344    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

venience,  and  cannot  affect  the  social  conditions  of 
labour  otherwise  than  as  economic  arrangements  can. 
The  practice  of  savings-banks  is  a  highly  useful 
economic  arrangement,  which  has  done  a  vast  amount 
of  good.  So  is  the  penny  post.  The  ready-money 
principle  is  a  valuable  rule.  The  practice  of  accumu- 
lating savings,  of  not  living  up  to  one's  income,  the 
habit  of  regular  economy,  of  giving  a  fair  price  for  a 
sound  article,  as  also  the  habit  of  early  rising,  are 
excellent  bits  of  worldly  wisdom  to  which  the  success- 
ful man  often  attributes  his  wealth.  But  these  things, 
useful  as  they  are,  especially  as  contributing  to  a  rise 
in  life,  are  not  vital  movements  of  society  or  new 
revelations.  They  form  merely  the  mode  in  which 
the  capitalist  classes  have  amassed  their  wealth,  and 
they  are  often  most  conspicuously  practised  by  men  who 
have  won  and  who  use  their  wealth  in  the  worst  way. 
The  very  men  with  whom  labour  has  had  the 
hardest  struggle,  are  just  those  who  exemplify  the 
value  of  these  rules.  And  it  is  significant  that 
the  men  who  are  the  most  earnest  advocates  of  this 
species  of  economic  prudence,  are  just  the  men  who 
are  known  as  the  most  hardened  followers  of  the 
barrenest  schools  of  political  economy,  to  whom  Com- 
petition is  a  sort  of  social  panacea  and  beneficent  dis- 
pensation. It  can  hardly  be  that  industry  is  to  be 
regenerated  simply  by  the  working  classes  coming  to 
practise  the  penny-wise  economics  of  the  getters  of 
capital.  It  is  much  to  be  desired  that  this  useful  kind 
of  prudence  was  more  common.  But  if  co-operation 
is  to  end  in  simply  putting  ^5  or  ^10  into  safe 
investments  for  working  men,  it  is  scarcely  worthy 
of  the  fervent  language  which  addresses  it  as  a  new 
gospel  of  the  future,  or  of  poems  to  celebrate  its  noble 
mission  upon  earth.  We  might  as  well  expect  them 
to  be  produced  about  a  goose  club. 


INDUSTRIAL  CO-OPERATION       345 

There  is  no  mystery  about  co-operation,  nor, 
indeed,  anything  very  original.  Railways  and  joint- 
stock  companies  in  general  are  simply  co-operative 
societies  ;  so  is  a  goose  club,  so  are  all  the  clubs  in 
Pall  Mall.  The  new  working-men's  clubs  are  so  still 
more,  and  this  admirable  movement  possesses  also  a 
great  many  of  the  advantages  of  the  co-operative 
system,  and  is  free  from  some  of  its  defects.  In 
fact,  wherever  a  number  of  persons  join  their  small 
capitals  into  one  capital,  of  which  they  manage  to 
share  the  profit  or  the  benefit  (a  system  as  old  at  least 
as  the  Romans),  a  true  co-operative  society  exists. 
No  doubt  there  are  no  companies  (or  very  few)  in 
which  the  subdivisions  of  shares  are  so  small  and  the 
facilities  so  great  as  to  enable  working  men  to  invest 
out  of  their  savings.  But  that  is  only  an  accident. 
It  is  quite  easy  to  conceive  a  joint-stock  company 
with  very  small  shares,  for  some  petty  local  object, 
very  much  connected  with  the  working  class — and 
many  land  and  building  societies  are  thus  connected 
— which  would  be  (many  of  them  now  are)  classed 
strictly  as  co-operative  societies. 

There  are  plenty  of  such  little  speculations,  got  up 
by  pushing  men  of  the  people,  owned  and  managed 
by  them  and  their  friends,  which  figure  in  the  long 
list  of  the  co-operative  roll.  They  are  very  useful 
institutions,  which  bring  a  good  dividend  to  the 
prudent  investor — and  so  are  gas  companies.  Now 
the  "  stores  "  offer  a  number  of  useful  and  incidental 
advantages  which  very  few  companies  do.  But  in 
principle  "stores"  are  joint-stock  companies  for  the 
sale  of  food  and  clothing.  As  such  they  are  doing  a 
vast  amount  of  good  ;  but  the  industrial  question  is 
not  solved,  or  even  materially  affected,  because  work- 
ing men  have  devised  and  developed  a  very  useful 
form  of  the  joint-stock  company  system. 


346    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

But  as  we  have  shown  above,  a  man  must  be  very 
short-sighted  to  see  nothing  more  than  this  in  the 
system  as  it  now  exists.  There  is  a  great  deal  more, 
only  it  is  entirely  subordinate  and  very  indefinite. 
There  is  a  widespread  wish  for  social  improvement, 
a  spirit  of  self-sacrifice,  and  an  unselfish  enthusiasm 
which  is  very  general  in  the  movement.  Gas 
companies  do  not  subscribe  to  help  each  other  in 
difficulties.  Railway  companies  are  not  given  to 
educational  funds.  Directors  do  not  usually  give 
their  services  gratuitously.  Joint -stock  companies' 
meetings,  when  they  declare  a  dividend  or  dead  loss, 
do  not  straightway  sing  a  hymn,  and  appeal  to  each 
other,  with  tears  in  their  eyes,  to  stand  like  men  to 
the  Limited  Liability  Act. 

There  is  something  in  this  movement  not  explic- 
able by  love  of  cash.  But  all  this  amounts  to  no  more 
than  that  some  very  noble,  earnest,  and  powerful  spirits 
have  thrown  themselves  into  the  movement.  It  is 
part  of  the  social  feeling  and  the  strong  sympathy 
which  mark  every  effort  of  the  genuine  sons  of 
labour  in  England,  and,  indeed,  in  Europe.  But  if 
it  is  a  true  part  of  co-operation  at  all,  it  is  a  part  so 
indefinite,  so  ill-understood,  and  so  very  much  dis- 
puted, that  it  cannot  be  said  to  be  more  than  an 
adjunct.  In  itself,  simply,  co-operation  is  a  joint-stock 
system  for  the  association  of  small  capitals.  This  has 
been  practised  by  the  rich  for  centuries,  without  any 
particular  moral  or  social  result.  The  prospectuses  of 
new  companies  contain  everything  except  homilies  on 
the  beauty  of  association.  But  the  moral  and  social 
spirit  which  undoubtedly  often  accompanies  co-opera- 
tion is  so  very  little  defined,  and  is  so  devoid  of  any 
principle,  system,  or  recognised  rule  whatever,  that  it 
cannot  keep  its  ground  beside  the  practical  clear  end 
of  a  good  dividend.  Co-operation  may  mean  either 


INDUSTRIAL  CO-OPERATION       347 

the  making  and  saving  of  money,  or  the  joint  labour 
of  all  for  all.  It  may  also  mean  partly  one,  partly 
the  other.  But  if  so,  the  relative  proportions  and 
limits  of  these  two  must  be  determined.  Until  this 
is  done,  co-operation  is  a  mere  form  of  pecuniary 
investment. 

Now  this  question  is  all  the  more  essential  because 
no  candid  friend  of  the  movement  can  deny  that  it  is 
one  on  which  its  supporters  are  wholly  divided.  Most 
societies  have  within  them  more  or  less  distinctly  two 
parties,  the  one  the  men  who  look  on  the  system  as  an 
economic,  the  other  as  a  social,  instrument.  The  first 
are  sincerely  desirous  to  become  and  to  see  their  fellows 
become  small  capitalists  ;  and  then,  in  the  words  of 
one  of  the  addresses,  "  the  great  problem  of  social 
economy  is  for  the  working  classes  to  keep  themselves 
with  their  own  money."  These  men  look  on  any- 
thing else  as  Communism,  and  they  are  strict  Political 
Economists.  The  other  party  fervently  desire  to  see 
a  system  in  which  the  share  of  capital  in  profit  is 
reduced,  and  in  which  capital  freely  devotes  part  of  its 
profit  to  labour  ;  and  these  men  are  disciples  of  some 
kind  of  Socialist  scheme,  and  very  often  previously 
Owenites  or  actual  Communists.  The  latter  are  the 
more  enthusiastic,  the  former  are  the  better  men  of 
business.  Both  are  useful,  but  they  differ,  as  the  dis- 
cussions and  divisions  in  the  societies  show.  At  present 
the  economic  school  always  carries  the  greatest  weight 
and  a  majority  of  votes.  The  result  is  generally  a 
friendly  compromise  ;  and  an  address  which  opens  with 
a  fervent  call  to  the  members  to  "  elevate  themselves 
by  making  money,"  closes  with  a  motto  in  verse. 

Each  for  all,  and  all  for  each, 
Helping,  loving  one  another. 

There  is,  however,  a  certain  poetic  vagueness  often 


348    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

about  the  social  element.  Facts  and  acts  are  distinct ; 
and,  I  believe,  there  is  now  no  co-operative  society 
existing  which  gives  any  substantial  part  of  its  income 
to  others  than  the  members  who  share  the  capital. 
There  are,  however,  unmistakably  two  real  sections 
in  the  co-operative  world,  and  also  in  its  friends  : 
those  who  desire  to  see  the  privileges  and  power  of 
capital  extended  to  working  men  by  their  becoming 
capitalists  ;  and  those  who  desire  to  see  working  men 
relieved,  by  capital  being  deprived  of  much  of  its 
privileges  and  its  power.  These  two  parties,  though 
quite  friendly,  are  widely  different,  and  at  present,  in 
the  division  list,  the  former  have  their  way. 

In  the  face  of  this  great  fact,  which  contains  the 
key  of  co-operation  as  a  social  system,  it  is  needless  to 
consider  the  value  of  the  general  principles  which  are 
vaguely  supposed  to  be  connected  with  it.  They  can 
have  no  stability,  for  they  do  not  rest  on  any  accepted 
set  of  truths,  or  any  recognised  principle  of  action. 
One  man  writes  to  ask  the  Co-operator  if  Sunday 
trading  is  not  contrary  to  the  "true  principle  of  co- 
operation." The  editor  of  that  useful  and  instructive 
periodical  plainly  considers  that  alcohol  is  ;  and  he 
vigorously  calls  to  order  a  "store"  which  ventured 
to  sell  beer.  Of  course,  co-operation  has  no  more  to 
do  with  teetotalism  than  it  has  with  Methodism. 

If  "co-operation  "  means  a  general  term  for  all  the 
moral  and  prudential  virtues,  or  rather  for  what  each 
man  takes  these  to  be,  it  means  nothing.  Nothing 
so  vague  can  make  any  great  effect.  The  thoughtful 
men  amongst  the  working  classes  know  well  that 
for  the  permanent  improvement  of  their  order  much 
more  remains  than  that  some  should  save  a  little 
money,  and  all  buy  cheaper  and  better  food.  Social 
wants  require  social  remedies,  and  such  things  are 
mere  delusions  unless  they  are  based  on  sound  social 


INDUSTRIAL  CO-OPERATION       349 

philosophy.  Modern  life  is  not  so  simple  a  thing  that 
it  can  be  reformed  by  prudent  maxims,  with  or  without 
fine  sentiments.  Nor  is  our  industrial  system  so  feeble 
a  matter  that  it  can  be  moved  by  vague  professions  of 
good-fellowship.  Stripped  of  this,  co-operation  is  one 
of  the  best,  perhaps  far  the  best  of  economic  expedi- 
ents for  increasing  the  comfort,  health,  and  happiness 
of  the  poor  man's  home  ;  but  as  such  it  cannot  claim 
to  have  solved  or  even  dealt  with  the  industrial  prob- 
lems of  society.  As  a  system  under  which  labour  is 
to  gain  a  new  position,  and  stand  on  fairer  terms  with 
capital,  it  has  yet  everything  to  do ;  for  it  has  neither 
done  nor  even  suggested  anything  tangible. 

We  have  hitherto  purposely  kept  out  of  view  the 
real  manufacturing  societies.  These  are  co-operative 
societies  which  are  employers  of  labour.  Here,  then, 
the  system  does  grapple  with  the  position  of  labour 
and  capital.  But  what  is  the  result  ?  As  a  test,  the 
experiment  is  scarcely  favourable.  The  manufacturing 
societies  are  extremely  few,  they  are  not  yet  exactly 
successful  as  speculations,  and  they  do  nothing  but 
pay  the  labourer  his  ordinary  market  wages.  They 
are  chiefly  flour-mills  and  cotton-mills.  Now  the 
flour-mills  have  paid  large  and  regular  dividends,  have 
done  a  considerable  business,  and  have  been  admirably 
managed,  and  of  course  have  had  their  hard  times. 
But  these  are  not  strictly  manufacturing  societies  ; 
they  supply  chiefly  their  own  members  and  other  co- 
operative societies,  and  may  be  more  properly  classed 
with  the  "stores."  The  amount  expended  in  labour 
is  extremely  small  compared  with  that  for  raw  material 
and  plant.  They  naturally  employ  at  times  workmen 
unconnected  with  the  society ;  but  I  have  never 
understood  that  mere  workmen  employed  by  them 
ever  receive  anything  but  the  market  rate  of  wages, 
or  any  particular  advantage,  privilege,  or  perquisite. 


350    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Nor  do  I  think  any  societies  in  the  kingdom  re- 
munerate their  ordinary  workpeople  in  any  other  way 
than  the  usual  mode.  Frequently  these  people  are 
shareholders,  but  very  often  are  not ;  and  in  any  case 
the  society,  or  rather  company,  wanting  labour,  goes 
into  the  market,  and  gives  the  price  of  labour  as  fixed 
by  competition ;  just  as  a  railway  company  does. 
The  fact  that  the  holders  of  the  shares  in  the 
"store"  or.  "mill"  are  for  the  most  part  (they  are 
not  always)  real  working  men,  is  a  very  important 
and  interesting  fact ;  but  it  does  not  affect  the  con- 
ditions of  labour,  or  add  appreciably  to  the  wages  of 
their  "  hands." 

The  flour-mills  apart — which  are  very  successful 
and  useful  modes  of  making  money — the  other  manu- 
facturing societies  are  insignificant,  until  we  come 
to  the  cotton-mills.  Here  and  there  an  association  of 
bootmakers,  hatters,  painters,  or  gilders  is  carried  on, 
upon  a  small  scale,  with  varying  success.  The  plate- 
lockmakers  of  Wolverhampton  (who  have  been  recently 
carrying  on  a  struggle  with  the  competing  capitalists 
so  gallantly)  are  another  instance.  But  small  bodies 
of  handicraftsmen  (or  rather  artists)  working  in 
common,  with  moderate  capital,  plant,  and  premises, 
obviously  establish  nothing.  The  only  true  instances 
of  manufacturing  co-operative  societies  of  any  im- 
portance are  the  cotton-mills.  During  the  great 
cotton  fever  which  preceded  the  distress,  several  mills 
were  started  or  projected.  Some  of  them  for  a  time 
seemed  promising.  The  great  Lancashire  famine, 
however,  came  on  them  almost  before  they  had  got 
to  work  j  and  it  would  be  impossible  to  draw  any 
inference  whatever  from  them.  Some  of  the  mills, 
however,  never  got  to  work  at  all.  Some  took  the 
simple  form  of  ordinary  joint-stock  companies,  in  few 
hands.  Others  passed  into  the  hands  of  small 


INDUSTRIAL  CO-OPERATION       351 

capitalists,  or  the  shares  were  concentrated  amongst 
the  promoters. 

There  is  now,  I  believe,  no  co-operative  cotton- 
mill  owned  by  working  men  in  actual  operation  on 
any  scale,  with  the  notable  exception  of  Rochdale. 
The  Rochdale  mill  deserves  consideration  by  itself. 
Rochdale,  it  is  well  known,  is  in  a  special  sense  the 
cradle  of  co-operation.  As  Mr.  Holyoake  tells  us  in 
his  admirable  account  of  its  rise  there  in  1844, 
"  Human  nature  must  be  different  at  Rochdale  from 
what  it  is  anywhere  else."  Its  rise  may  be  distinctly 
traced  to  the  influence  of  Owenism,  and  some  of  its 
leading  promoters  there,  besides  being  men  of  real 
industrial  genius,  are  deeply  imbued  with  many 
valuable  principles  tvhich  Robert  Owen  upheld.  The 
Rochdale  cotton-mill  once  bid  fair  to  be  an  extra- 
ordinary success  in  a  commercial  view.  Their  build- 
ings are  not  surpassed  by  any,  and  equalled  by  few, 
in  the  county  ;  their  management  has  been  cautious 
and  able ;  their  credit  stands  in  the  money-market 
even  higher  than  that  of  neighbouring  capitalists  ; 
they  weathered  the  storm  of  the  cotton  distress  perhaps 
better  than  any,  being  almost  the  last  to  close  and  the 
first  to  open  j  and  they  are  now  running  full  time. 
They  have,  in  fact,  proved  that  it  is  quite  possible  for 
a  cotton-mill  (at  any  rate)  to  be  worked  on  the  largest 
scale,  with  a  successful  result,  on  the  co-operative 
principle. 

What,  however,  they  have  not  proved  is  the  possi- 
bility of  a  mill  being  wholly  owned  by  those  who 
work  it,  and  of  labour  receiving  more  than  the 
ordinary  market  share  of  the  profits.  The  mill  was 
founded  on  the  principle  of  dividing  all  profits  (after 
satisfying  all  expenses  and  the  interest  on  fixed  capital) 
equally  between  the  shareholders  and  the  workmen, 
every  £100  received  in  wages  counting  in  the  dis- 


352    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

tribution  of  the  dividend  the  same  as  every  £100 
invested  in  shares.  This  principle  was  a  real  experi- 
ment to  institute  a  new  condition  of  labour.  The 
mill  had  not  worked  long,  however,  before  (in  1861) 
this  principle,  after  a  severe  struggle,  was  abandoned, 
and  no  efforts  of  the  minority,  backed  by  many 
influential  friends  of  the  movement,  have  succeeded 
in  restoring  it.  This,  therefore,  in  the  great  home  of 
co-operation,  has  for  the  present  decided  the  issue. 
The  question  how  to  give  the  labourer  a  larger  share 
of  the  profits  has  failed  of  solution.  A  body  of  co- 
operative capitalists,  it  is  there  seen,  hire  and  pay 
their  own  workmen  on  the  ordinary  terms  of  the 
market,  and  under  the  rule  of  simple  competition. 
This  is  the  greatest  blow,  in  fact,  which  the  system 
has  ever  yet  sustained,  and  is  one  which,  if  it  cannot 
be  reversed,  stamps  it  as  incompetent  to  affect  per- 
manently the  conditions  of  industry.  In  spite  of  all 
efforts  which  faith,  hope,  and  charity  make  to  conceal 
it,  this  decision  has  planted  a  deep  root  of  division 
amongst  the  co-operative  body,  and  has  broken  the 
confidence  of  their  most  zealous  friends.  Some  of 
the  most  active  friends  of  the  movement  as  loudly 
justify  it  as  others  loudly  condemn  it.  And  a  long 
controversy  has  been  carried  on  with  great  energy 
and  no  result.  But  a  vote  of  the  whole  body  of  co- 
operators  would  undoubtedly  show  for  the  economic 
party  an  overwhelming  majority. 

But  it  may  be  said  that,  supposing  co-operation 
distinctly  to  surrender  or  disclaim  every  thought  of 
affecting  the  existing  conditions  and  rights  of  capital, 
it  is  fulfilling  a  great  mission  if  it  enables  the  work- 
men to  share  the  capital ;  and  the  Rochdale  cotton- 
mill,  although  it  does  not  divide  its  profits  amongst 
its  workmen,  still  pays  them  as  shareholders,  and  in 
one  way  or  other  the  workmen  themselves  obtain  the 


INDUSTRIAL  CO-OPERATION       353 

share  of  the  profits,  and  gain  the  security  and  inde- 
pendence of  an  invested  fund.  Unfortunately  this  is 
not  so.  The  shares  of  this  mill  are  now  in  a  very  large 
proportion  held  by  men  who  are  not  workmen  in  it,  and 
not  a  small  proportion  is  held  by  men  who  are  not  now 
working  men  at  all.  The  number  of  shares  owned  by 
the  ordinary  "  hands  "  is  not  sufficient  to  establish  any 
very  important  principle.  And  until  this  is  the  case, 
and  that  permanently,  nothing  decisive  is  done.  It 
is  an  instructive  fact  that  a  number  of  men  who  are, 
or  have  been,  receiving  weekly  wages,  should  own 
and  manage  important  cotton-mills.  But  as  half  the 
fortunes  in  Lancashire  have  been  created  by  such  men 
individually,  there  is  nothing  astounding  in  the  fact 
that  an  association  of  them  can  do  the  same.  Can 
it  be  regarded  as  the  herald  of  a  social  and  moral 
millennium  that  a  large  mill  is  worked  by  a  company 
which  consists  of  the  managers,  foremen,  and  principal 
workmen  in  it,  of  several  well-to-do  men  who  have 
been  working  men  and  have  accumulated  savings,  and 
of  some  of  the  small  shopkeepers  of  a  town?  Let  all  men 
save  money  that  can,  but  society  need  feel  no  special 
enthusiasm  at  the  fact  that  several  hundreds  of  working 
men  are  able  to  retire  upon  comfortable  incomes. 

Now  to  that,  be  it  said  with  all  regret  and  sober- 
ness, the  Rochdale  cotton-mill  seems  tending  under 
its  present  regime.  If  it  has  not  reached  it  yet,  it 
seems  certain  that  in  the  course  of  time  it  must.  The 
process  is  very  obvious  to  any  one  who  knows  how 
these  things  work.  A  body  of  resolute  working  men, 
full  of  enthusiasm  and  self-reliance,  start  a  manufactur- 
ing society  together.  The  shares  cannot,  of  course, 
be  inalienable,  which  is  opposed  to  all  modern  require- 
ments. If  the  concern  has  only  a  margin  of  profit, 
they  struggle  on  heroically,  and  often  carry  out  their 
principle  for  a  long  time.  But  then  the  experiment 

2  A 


354     NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

is  of  doubtful  commercial  success.  If  the  concern 
thrives  greatly  and  rapidly,  the  tendency  of  capital  is 
to  rush  in  and  absorb  the  shares  as  a  simple  invest- 
ment. Again,  the  shares  naturally  aggregate  into  a 
few  hands.  Both  these  tendencies  are  felt  in  all 
successful  manufacturing  societies.  They  have  the 
greatest  difficulty,  and  have  devised  all  sorts  of 
ingenious  devices,  with  little  result,  to  prevent  them. 
But  do  what  they  will,  the  shares  get  more  and  more 
into  the  hands  of  men  of  some  small  capital.  The  nearer 
this  limit  is  reached,  the  more  completely  does  the 
concern  become  a  simple  joint-stock  company.  Some 
of  the  workmen  suffer  domestic  privations,  some  are 
improvident,  some  cease  work  and  bequeath  their 
shares,  and  in  countless  ways  the  workmen  cease  to 
hold  the  shares. 

The  process  is  very  rapid,  and  occurs  under  all 
conceivable  conditions.  Even  if  the  strictest  provisions 
existed,  nothing  can  prevent  capitalists  at  last  owning 
shares, — or  shares,  at  best,  accumulating  in  the  hands 
of  the  more  fortunate  or  more  skilful  shareholders. 
And  even  if  this  were  done,  nothing  can  prevent  the 
shareholders  personally  becoming  richer  men.  A 
capital,  we  may  suppose,  of  ^50,000  is  invested  in  a 
mill  employing  500  men,  who  equally  own  the  shares  at 
the  rate  of^ioo  a  piece.  If  trade  is  very  good,  and 
the  profits  as  great  as  they  used  to  be,  each  of  these 
men,  if  he  retained  his  own  shares,  and  was  very 
industrious,  prudent,  and  economical — and  to  succeed 
most  of  the  members  must  be  this — will  own  in  course 
of  years  several  hundred  pounds.  Is  it  conceivable 
that  a  body  of  workmen,  each  owning,  for  instance, 
^500,  will  continue  one  and  all  at  the  loom  and  the 
spindle  ?  Or  would  they  when  each  was  worth  ^1000  ? 
Certainly  not.  Why  should  they  ?  Indeed,  a  man 
who  has  shown  great  aptitude  in  employing  capital 


INDUSTRIAL  CO-OPERATION       355 

and  accumulating  wealth,  is  impelled  by  every  instinct 
of  our  nature,  and  habit  of  our  civilisation,  to  say  nothing 
of  being  probably  bound  by  every  claim  of  domestic 
and  social  duty,  to  devote  his  talent  and  energy  to  the 
employment  of  capital,  and  to  cease  to  spend  his  life  in 
running  after  a  "  mule."  A  working  man  begins  to 
own  a  small  capital  ;  the  qualities  which  have  acquired 
it  soon  make  it  a  larger  capital  (in  Lancashire  very 
soon) ;  directly  he  is  a  real  capitalist  he  ceases  to  be 
one  of  the  employed,  and  becomes  one  of  the  em- 
ployers ;  and  as  co-operation  has  simply  enabled  him 
to  become  a  capitalist,  and  refuses  to  alter  the  condition 
of  the  employed,  merely  as  such,  the  man  soon  becomes 
an  employer  of  the  ordinary  type. 

It  is  not  worth  much  to  say  that  these  small 
capitalists,  who  have  been  actual  working  men,  will 
know  and  feel  the  position  of  their  workmen.  Unfor- 
tunately the  successful  working  men  are  not  those 
whom  their  class  have  most  reason  to  love.  It  is  well 
known  that  the  closest  men  of  business  are  those  who 
have  risen  from  the  ranks,  whose  formula  is,  "  What 
was  good  enough  for  me,  is  good  enough  for  them." 
And  working  men  well  know  that  if  the  hardest 
masters  are  the  men  who  have  risen  out  of  their  own 
order,  the  hardest  of  all  is  a  trading  company  of  such 
men.  It  does  not  appear  that  co-operative  societies, 
as  a  rule,  have  very  much  to  boast  of  in  their  treat- 
ment of  their  own  workpeople.  It  will,  perhaps,  be 
agreed  that  at  many  stores  the  servants  are  rather 
closely  and  sparingly  treated  than  otherwise.  It  is 
quite  natural  when  we  remember  that  their  employers 
are  men  not  accustomed  to  deal  with  large  sums,  or 
make  gifts,  or  provide  for  others  ;  are  responsible 
members  of  a  Board  ;  that  every  detail  is  scrutinised, 
and  every  effort  made  to  find  the  best  dividend.  There 
is  a  well-known  case  of  a  very  flourishing  concern 


356     NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

which  was  started  by  a  few  associated  workmen  as  a 
co-operative  society,  which  js  now  simply  a  company 
in  a  few  hands,  not  a  single  workman  owning  the 
smallest  share.  It  is  notorious  that  this  concern  deals 
with  its  people  (to  say  the  least)  not  a  whit  better 
than  surrounding  capitalists.  Yet  this  is  nothing  but 
a  co-operative  society  which  has  been  wonderfully 
successful.  What  would  industry  gain  if  keen-scented 
companies  like  this  existed  in  every  city  of  the 
kingdom  ? 

Professor  Fawcett  (in  his  excellent  Manual)  thinks 
that  the  difficulty  should  be  met  by  the  societies 
making  a  rule  of  employing  none  but  shareholders. 
This  is  plainly  impracticable.  If  workmen  who  left 
the  mill  were  compelled  to  sell  their  shares,  they  would 
cease  to  form  or  to  give  the  privileges  of  capital.  If 
workmen  to  fill  their  places  were  required,  it  would 
be  impossible  to  insist  that  they  should  purchase 
shares.  It  would  narrow  the  labour  market  to  an 
impracticable  degree,  and  no  mill  could  work  on  such 
terms.  And  if  it  could,  what  an  anomaly  would  be 
a  society  founded  to  ameliorate  the  position  of  the 
labourer  which  made  a  rule  of  refusing  employment  to 
any  but  those  who  had  a  sum  of  ready  money  in  hand  ! 
Besides,  how  about  the  women  and  children  ?  The 
majority  of  the  work-people  of  a  cotton-mill  are 
women  and  children — wives,  lads,  and  girls.  But  all 
these  ("  doffers "  included)  could  hardly  have  shares, 
or  at  any  rate  could  not  exercise  any  freedom  in  them. 
The  young  folk  and  children  unfortunately  have  not, 
as  a  rule,  parents  in  the  mill,  and  often  have  no  parents 
at  all.  This  is  just  the  class  on  whom  capital  presses 
most  hardly.  To  them  co-operation  offers  nothing. 
In  short,  the  idea  of  the  workmen  permanently  owning 
the  capital  is  illusory.  As  a  partial  temporary  measure 
in  a  petty  trade  like  an  oyster  fishery  it  may  be 


INDUSTRIAL  CO-OPERATION       357 

possible  for  the  workers  to  own  the  capital  and  plant. 
In  all  the  larger  and  complex  forms  of  industry  it  is 
impossible.  The  owners  of  valuable  property  will 
not,  cannot,  and  ought  not  to  continue  at  manual 
labour  for  wages.  Nothing  can  prevent  co-operative 
manufactories  from  hastening  rapidly  to  become 
simply  trading  companies.  And  the  co-operative 
system,  if  it  only  enables  a  number  of  men  to  obtain 
capital,  will  do  nothing  by  means  of  a  few  vague  pro- 
fessions to  touch  the  root  of  the  evil — the  reckless  and 
selfish  employment  of  capital.  It  will  be  a  system  which 
has  its  uses  and  its  abuses,  like  the  railway  system  or  the 
banking  system,  but  it  will  leave  the  moral  condition 
of  society,  as  these  do,  precisely  where  they  are. 

Hitherto  the  question  of  the  capacity  of  co-operative 
societies  for  success  has  been  kept  out  of  sight  inten- 
tionally. It  is  plain  that  the  "  stores  "  with  reasonably 
good  management  and  skill  are  certain  of  success,  often 
of  wonderful  success.  But,  as  has  been  shown,  the 
success  of  men  clubbing  together  to  buy  their  own 
food  and  clothing  is  nothing  at  all.  We  can  go  much 
further.  We  may  say  that  in  many  trades  a  body  of 
workmen  can  conduct  a  business  with  entire  com- 
mercial success.  Where  it  is  a  case  of  exceptional 
profits,  as  in  the  cotton  trade  from  1858-1861  ;  of 
very  small  capital  or  plant,  as  a  body  of  painters,  shoe- 
makers, masons,  etc.  (such  men  are  really  artificers), 
where  very  much  depends  on  the  personal  skill,  care, 
and  zeal  of  each  individual  workman,  no  doubt  signal 
success  is  quite  within  their  reach.  Associations  of 
the  kind,  well  founded  and  honestly  conducted,  are 
worthy  of  every  help  and  confidence.  By  all  means 
let  there  be  plenty  such.  But  all  this  is  a  drop  in  the 
ocean  of  industry.  If  there  is  one  thing  which  the 
progress  of  civilisation  more  continually  develops,  it 
is  that  the  direction  of  capital  requires  entire  freedom, 


358     NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

undivided  devotion,  a  life  of  training,  and  innate 
business  instincts. 

All  our  complex  forms  of  industry  involve  some- 
times, in  the  directors,  engineering  or  practical  genius, 
a  sort  of  instinct  of  the  market,  and  a  life -long 
familiarity  with  an  involved  mass  of  considerations, 
partly  mechanical,  partly  monetary,  partly  administra- 
tive. The  head  of  a  great  production  is  like  the 
captain  of  a  ship  or  the  general  of  an  army.  He  must 
have  scientific  knowledge,  technical  knowledge,  practical 
knowledge,  presence  of  mind,  dash,  courage,  zeal,  and 
the  habit  of  command.  It  is  all  very  well  for  working 
men  to  buy  butter  and  tea  prudently,  and  even  to 
superintend  the  agents  who  buy  it  for  them.  But  it 
is  ridiculous  to  tell  the  hammermen  at  a  forge  that 
they  can  successfully  carry  on  Whitworth's  engineering 
business,  or  build  the  Great  Eastern.  Conceive  the 
London  and  North- Western  Railway  managed  by  its 
stokers,  porters,  and  ticket-clerks,  or  the  Peninsular 
and  Oriental  Steamboat  Company  carried  on  by  a 
committee  of  seamen,  or  the  Bank  of  England 
managed  by  its  ordinary  cashiers  !  These  are  ex- 
treme cases,  but  they  strikingly  explain  the  real 
defect  of  the  position.  What  is  the  limit  ?  Where 
does  the  business  become  so  simple  that  it  can  be 
managed  by  the  mere  workmen  whom  it  employs  ? 
Arguments  on  this  subject  are  almost  ridiculous, 
were  it  not  that  the  extravagant  pretensions  of  some 
co-operators  seem  to  call  for  notice.  In  a  word, 
no  sensible  man  will  deny  that  the  great  industrial 
occupations  would  come  to  disastrous  ruin  were  it 
not  for  entire  secrecy,  rapidity,  and  concentration  of 
action,  and  that  practical  instinct  of  trade  which 
nothing  but  a  whole  life  and  a  very  difficult  education 
can  give — and  even  that  can  give  only  to  a  few. 

It  profits  little  to  argue  that  the  bulk  of  the  work- 


INDUSTRIAL  CO-OPERATION      359 

men,  though  unfit  to  manage,  are  very  fit  to 
superintend  the  management.  He  who  is  unfit  to 
manage  is  not  fit  to  direct  the  manager.  The  only 
course  open  to  inexperienced  men  undertaking  a 
complex  manufacture  would  be  to  trust  themselves 
blindly  to  a  skilful  director.  But  if  they  do,  they  are 
simply  in  his  hands,  and  the  independence  and  value 
of  their  owning  the  capital  is  at  an  end.  It  cannot 
be  turned  both  ways.  Either  the  manager  is  con- 
trolled by  the  shareholders,  in  which  case  success  is 
endangered,  or  he  is  free,  and  then  they  lose  responsi- 
bility and  practical  power  to  affect  the  management. 
You  cannot  buy  the  inspiring  authority  any  more  than 
the  electric  will  of  a  great  military  or  political  chief. 
It  is  impossible  to  hire  commercial  genius  and  the 
instincts  of  a  skilful  trader.  Nor  must  it  be  forgotten 
that  the  success  of  great  trading  companies  proves 
nothing.  They  are  companies  of  capitalists,  the  large 
majority  of  whom  are  by  the  habits  of  their  lives 
trained  to  the  skilful  employment  of  capital,  and 
versed  from  childhood  in  the  ways  of  trade.  And 
even  these  men  practically  entrust  the  whole  manage- 
ment blindly  to  a  few  great  capitalists  among  them, 
any  one  of  whom  might  very  well  own  and  direct  the 
whole  concern.  The  fact  that  an  association  of 
capitalists  can  manage  a  gigantic  interest  does  nothing 
to  prove  that  an  association  of  workmen  can.  A 
company  of  merchants,  naval  men,  and  financiers, 
whose  whole  lives  have  trained  them  to  it,  can  manage 
the  Peninsular  and  Oriental  undertaking.  Does  that 
prove  that  a  company  of  able  seamen  could  ? 

But  this  is  to  repeat  for  the  hundredth  time  the 
objections  against  Socialism  and  Communism.  There 
is  no  need  now,  or  in  this  country,  to  expose  the 
unsoundness  of  these.  But  co-operation,  whilst 
sharing  in  many  of  their  defects,  wholly  forgets  the 


360    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

high  aims  which  make  these  systems  noble  in  their 
errors.  The  great-hearted  and  misjudged  enthusiasts 
who  taught  them,  really  grasped  the  industrial  evils  in 
their  fulness,  and  resolutely  met  them  with  a  cure. 
They  saw  that  the  root  of  the  evil  was  the  extreme 
power  and  selfishness  of  capital.  They  met  it  by 
destroying  the  institution  of  individual  property,  or 
by  subjecting  it  to  new  conditions  and  imposing  on 
it  new  duties.  In  Communism,  where  labour  and 
capital  were  alike  devoted  to  the  common  benefit ;  in 
Socialism,  where  labour  and  capital  are  radically  re- 
organised, whatever  else  of  evil  they  might  contain, 
the  relative  condition  of  the  labourer  must  certainly 
have  improved.  But  co-operation  is  a  compromise 
which  reduces  none  of  the  rights  of  property  and 
imposes  on  it  no  new  obligation.  Starting  from  the 
same  point  as  Socialism — the  anti-social  use  of  capital, 
and  the  prostration  of  the  labourer  before  it — it  seeks 
to  remedy  all  its  consequences  by  making  more 
capitalists.  It  faces  all  the  risks  which  beset  the 
subdivision  of  capital  amongst  a  mass  of  inexperienced 
holders,  and  then  does  nothing  to  guarantee  more 
justice  in  the  employment  of  that  capital  in  the 
aggregate. 

The  subdivision  of  the  capital,  after  all,  is  a  mere 
mechanical  expedient.  It  must  be  temporary.  The 
aggregation  of  capital,  the  accumulation  of  wealth  in 
the  hands  of  the  more  skilful,  is  one  of  the  most 
elemental  tendencies  of  society.  The  prudent  will 
grow  rich,  the  rich  will  grow  more  rich.  It  is,  in 
truth,  one  of  the  primary  truths  about  human  labour. 
Communism  boldly  says — Let  none  grow  rich.  Co- 
operation simply  says — Let  more  grow  rich.  After 
all,  how  very  small  is  the  number  whom  it  can 
permanently  make  capitalists.  All  cannot  grow  rich. 
It  is  puerile  to  suppose  that  all  can  have  the  advantages 


INDUSTRIAL  CO-OPERATION       361 

of  capital ;  for  if  all  had  them,  the  advantages  would 
cease.  Or  at  least,  since  they  would  all  share  capital 
most  unequally,  their  relative  position  is  not  much 
altered.  The  weak  now  go  to  the  wall,  and  so  they 
would  if  the  strong  had  the  means  of  getting  stronger. 
It  is  easy  and  most  desirable  that  every  family  in  an 
industrial  town  should  club  to  buy  food,  and  have 
£20  at  interest  in  the  "store."  But  if  the  entire 
industry  of  the  country  were  started  on  the  co-operative 
system,  in  a  generation  the  shareholders  would  be  a 
small  minority,  and  certain  knots  of  them  would 
doubtless  develop  the  most  formidable  industrial 
tyranny  which  modern  Europe  has  seen. 

Hereafter,  we  are  always  told,  co-operation  will 
develop  the  true  plan  of  admitting  labour  to  a  share  of 
the  profits.  It  may  be  ;  but  no  one  of  the  elaborate 
systems  of  Socialism  has  stood  critical  examination. 
The  attempt  to  apportion  exactly  that  share  which  is 
the  right  of  labour,  and  that  which  is  the  right  of 
capital,  has  always  ended  in  absurdity.1  To  apply 
mathematical  formulae  to  social  and  political  questions 
is  the  surest  test  of  a  low  education.  What  arith- 
metical ratio  ought  property  and  numbers  to  hold  in 
government  ?  What  is  the  value  of  this  man's  or  that 
class's  vote  ?  Such  are  the  crudest  of  metaphysical 
puzzles,  and  the  arithmetically  just  share  of  labour  in 
the  profits  is  one  of  them.  Clearly  the  share,  what- 
ever it  should  be,  varies  in  every  trade  ;  it  varies  in 
every  operation,  it  varies  to  each  workman.  It  is  a 
common  idea  that  equity  would  consist  in  sharing 
equally  between  labour  and  capital,  every  ^10  of 
capital  receiving  the  same  dividend  as  every  jCio 
of  wages.  But  why  equally  ?  The  ancient  philosopher 
says  "the  vulgar  think  that  that  which  is  equal  is 

1  See   interminable   discussions   in   the   Co-operator  on  this  hopeless 
problem. 


362 

just."  But  it  requires  a  disquisition  on  the  elements 
of  society  (which  are  very  differently  estimated)  to 
show  why  in  abstract  justice  the  £10  of  labour 
expended  in  making  a  piece  of  cotton  is  the  fair 
equivalent  of  the  j£io  of  capital  which  bought  the 
material  and  machinery.  All  that  can  be  said  is,  that 
it  is  the  market  price  —  the  conventional  measure. 
But  this  is  the  measure  of  that  very  industrial  system 
which  is  declared  to  be  so  radically  unjust. 

Minds  that  do  not  delight  in  these  metaphysical 
will-o'-the-wisps  will,  on  reflection,  see  that  there  is 
no  more  ground  to  say  that  the  just  share  of  labour 
is  half  than  that  it  is  double,  or  a  third,  or  a  tenth. 
What  is  the  just  share  of  a  successful  general  in  the 
plunder  ?  What  is  the  just  share  of  the  painter  of 
a  picture,  and  the  man  who  wove  the  canvas  and 
ground  the  colours  ?  Generals  win  battles  in  spite  of 
bad  soldiers,  and  soldiers  win  battles  in  spite  of  bad 
generals  :  what  is  the  share  of  each  in  the  result  ?  A 
capitalist  of  consummate  skill  makes  a  business  thrive 
in  spite  of  every  opposition  ;  a  reckless  capitalist  ruins 
the  most  promising  business.  And  if  labour  and 
capital  share  equally,  what  becomes  of  talent,  so  justly 
considered  in  Fourierism  ?  Who  is  to  estimate  the 
share  which  mechanical  genius,  instinctive  sagacity, 
and  personal  ascendency  ought  to  secure  for  a  masterly 
trader  ?  All  sorts  of  ingenious  rules  have  been 
suggested  to  determine  this  just  share  mathematically, 
and  each  is  a  fresh  absurdity.  The  whole  subject  is 
a  quicksand  which  defies  measurement.  The  pro- 
portion depends  entirely  on  the  point  of  view  which 
is  taken  as  most  important  in  civilisation.  One  who 
values  intellectual  power  will  think  justice  gives  the 
larger  share  to  the  controlling  mind.  One  who  is 
impressed  with  the  importance  of  capital  will  award 
it  to  property.  And  he  who  sympathises  with  the 


INDUSTRIAL  CO-OPERATION       363 

sufferings  and  privations  of  manual  toil  will  give  it 
to  labour.  But  it  is  of  less  importance  to  consider 
what  proportion  of  profit  co-operation  will  give  to 
labour,  because  at  present  in  England  it  does  not 
give  any. 

But  if  we  suppose  the  just  relative  shares  of  labour 
and  capital  fixed  by  some  sort  of  inspiration,  they 
would  not  long  remain  just.  The  proportion  must 
be  fixed  by  some  consideration  of  the  difficulty  which 
there  is  in  finding  one  or  other  element.  In  a  given 
undertaking,  the  relative  importance  of  the  capital  and 
the  labour  might  be  mathematically  taken  as  equal, 
and  the  proportionate  value  ascertained.  But  suppose 
the  available  labourers  doubled  in  number,  or  the 
available  capital  halved.  Some  regard  ought  to  be 
taken  of  the  new  importance  of  capital,  when  so  many 
more  needed  it,  or  there  was  only  half  as  much  of  it. 
But  this  is  only  to  fall  back  on  the  old  rule  of  com- 
petition, of  supply  and  demand.  ^10  worth  of  labour 
is  only  equal  to  ^10  worth  of  capital,  at  the  present 
market  rate  ;  if  wages  improved,  ^10  worth  of  labour 
would  become  ^15  worth  of  labour,  and  so  on.  ^10 
worth  of  agricultural  labour,  in  Dorsetshire,  means 
twenty  weeks  of  good  farm-work  ;  in  Yorkshire,  it 
means  ten  weeks ;  in  New  Zealand,  it  means  five 
weeks  ;  in  Saxony,  it  means  fifty  weeks.  Which  of 
these  is  just  I  But  ^10  represents  nearly  as  many 
ploughs  and  spades,  loaves  and  coats  —  though  not 
quite — in  all.  The  labourer's  wages  usually  fall  when 
he  is  in  distress  ;  his  ^10  worth  of  labour  may  become 
^5,  without  any  fault  of  his  own,  and  though  he  work 
still  harder.  But  the  ^10  in  capital  never  fluctuates  so 
quickly  or  so  greatly.  That  is  to  say,  the  share  which 
the  system  of  justice  gives  to  the  labourer  will  be  least 
precisely  when  and  where  he  most  needs  it.  Surely  this 
is  competition  systematised  under  the  mask  of  equity  ! 


Or,  suppose  no  regard  is  paid  to  the  difficulty  of 
obtaining  capital  or  labour — which,  after  all,  is  com- 
petition, supply,  and  demand — and  it  were  attempted 
to  apportion,  by  abstract  justice,  the  share  of  labour 
and  capital — how  should  we  proceed  ?  Capital  results 
from  saving  —  that  is,  abstinence.  How  much  ab- 
stinence is  equivalent  to  how  much  labour  ?  And 
then,  what  sort  of  abstinence  and  what  sort  of  labour  ? 
Under  what  conditions,  over  what  period,  and  so 
forth  ?  The  abstinence  of  a  nobleman  who  saves 
,£10,000  a  year  out  of  ^20,000  is  not  heroic  virtue  ; 
but  it  is  a  great  power,  and  represents  the  labour  of 
300  men  for  a  year.  The  whole  thing  is  a  pedant's 
puzzle.  We  attempt  to  measure  in  figures  the  relative 
values  of  labour  and  capital,  and  we  come  at  once  to 
the  old  conventional  measure — the  market  standard. 
We  adopt  it,  and  we  incorporate  with  our  system  of 
justice  all  the  injustice  of  competition,  and  we  stereo- 
type all  its  evils.  The  noble  enthusiasts  who  taught 
Socialism  at  least  saw  this,  and  they  determined  to 
meet  it  by  reorganising  society,  and  imposing  new 
conditions  on  property.  Each  fresh  difficulty  drove 
them  to  fresh  safeguards  and  more  ingenious  regula- 
tions. The  world  now  knows  the  utter  failure  of 
these  visions  of  a  society  drilled  like  a  regiment  and 
tutored  like  a  school.  But  with  all  their  errors  and 
their  follies,  they  never  thought  that  the  just  claims  of 
labour  could  be  settled  "  by  algebra."  They  saw  that 
there  are  but  two  ways  in  which  labour  and  capital — 
or  say,  rather,  the  human  faculties  and  efforts — can 
receive  their  proportionate  shares :  by  competition,  or 
by  a  radical  revision  of  the  mechanism  of  the  whole 
social  system. 

There  is  one  other  consideration  (and  it  is  of  the 
utmost  importance)  which  co-operators  usually  over- 
look. In  a  plain,  thriving  business — as  in  the  cotton 


INDUSTRIAL  CO-OPERATION       365 

trade  before  the  American  war,  when  profits  were 
certain  and  large — it  seems  a  very  simple  thing  to 
divide  the  profit  equitably.  But  what  if  there  is  no 
profit,  or  a  dead  loss  ?  Under  the  rule  of  abstract  justice, 
it  does  not  seem  quite  clear  why,  if  a  business  is  working 
at  a  dead  loss,  the  very  wages  should  be  paid.  Yet,  to 
give  capital  its  due,  however  great  its  losses,  it  pays 
the  market  rate  of  wages  to  all  whom  it  employs. 
Now,  in  striking  the  just  balance,  something  ought  to 
be  allowed  to  capital  for  this  liability,  since  it  has 
to  bear  all  the  loss.  And  yet,  how  is  the  risk,  the 
chance  of  dead  loss,  to  be  estimated  ?  If  any  arrange- 
ment is  devised  which  is  to  throw  the  loss  on  labour, 
then  labour  ought  to  have  a  voice  in  the  management; 
and  we  should  have  co-operative  mills  managed  not 
only  by  committees  and  meetings  of  shareholders,  but 
joint  committees  and  meetings  of  the  shareholders, 
and  their  workmen  and  workwomen.  But  co-operators 
are  not  prepared  for  this,  for  this  is  Socialism,  and  a 
distinct  invasion  of  the  rights  of  capital. 

Working  men,  perhaps,  are  a  little  disposed  to 
undervalue  the  constant  and  enormous  losses  which 
capital  has  to  bear.  How  many  a  business,  ultimately 
thriving,  has  run  at  a  dead  loss  for  years — a  loss  which, 
if  thrown  on  the  workmen,  would  have  brought  them 
to  destitution.  Now,  capital  can  stand  these  great 
fluctuations  just  because  it  is  capital — i.e.  a  reserve  ; 
but  the  fluctuations  of  the  labourer's  income,  just 
because  he  has  only  a  reserve  in  rare  cases,  unsettle 
and  derange  his  daily  comfort  and  his  domestic  life. 
These  losses,  when  averted,  are  often  averted  by  the 
personal  sagacity  and  energy  of  the  capitalist,  which  it 
is  impossible  to  estimate  in  figures.  The  whole  life 
and  soul  of  a  difficult  business  (as  of  a  difficult  cam- 
paign) often  depends  entirely  on  the  skill  of  the  chief  ; 
and  he  would  be  crippled  if  he  were  a  subordinate 


366    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

manager.  There  is  a  great  deal  more  resemblance 
than  is  often  supposed  between  a  military  association 
and  an  industrial  one.  The  successful  direction  of 
combined  human  effort  requires  very  similar  conditions, 
whether  the  activity  takes  the  form  of  killing  an 
enemy  or  of  making  steam-engines.  It  is  as  illusory 
to  apportion  the  just  share  of  the  capitalist  to  the 
profits,  or  to  subject  his  action  to  his  subordinates, 
as  it  would  be  to  put  an  army  into  commission,  and 
direct  it  by  a  Board  and  an  assembly  of  common 
soldiers. 

Nor  is  the  industrial  question  simply  one  of  money. 
Labour  would  not  be  helped  simply  by  awarding  it  a 
new  share  of  the  profits  j  many  labourers  would  use  it 
just  as  improvidently  and  unluckily  as  they  do  their 
present  share.  The  main  and  the  just  complaint  of 
labour  is,  not  that  it  has  too  small  a  share  of  the  profit, 
but  that  it  is  too  often  exposed  to  the  exorbitant  power 
of  capital,  and  the  oppressive  use  of  that  power.  All 
know  that  there  are  very  many  ways  in  which  the 
capitalist  can  hold  the  labourer  gripped  in  a  crushing 
system,  whilst  remunerating  him  largely.  Some  of 
the  best -paid  occupations  —  that  of  colliers,  coal- 
whippers,  tailors,  and  excavators — receive  very  high 
wages,  although  often  suffering  the  most  systematic 
oppression.  Wages  are  frequently  enormous  where 
"  truck "  is  a  dominant  institution :  the  money 
question  is  often  the  least  part  of  it.  Nor  would  any 
system  which  simply  added  to  wages,  and  left  capital 
with  all  its  power,  do  much  to  establish  equity. 
Justice  is  not  done  to  the  unprotected  labourer  simply 
by  giving  him  more  money,  if  every  power  and  right 
which  capital  possesses  to  oppress  him  is  left  un- 
touched. The  evils  which  fall  hardest  on  labour  are 
— irregular  work  ;  overtime  ;  exhausting,  unhealthy, 
and  dangerous  work ;  fluctuations  in  earnings,  place 


INDUSTRIAL  CO-OPERATION       367 

and  hours  of  work  j  forfeits ;  personal,  domestic,  and 
private  oppression  ;  want  of  leisure,  justice,  and  pro- 
tection. All  these,  which  Unionism  provides  for, 
Co-operation  leaves  untouched  ;  and  as  to  overwork, 
rather  stimulates  than  reduces  it.  Co-operation  con- 
cerns itself  solely  with  the  re-distribution  of  capital 
and  its  produce.  For  the  employment  and  the  duties 
of  capital  it  has  not  a  word. 

Capital  has  its  beneficent  as  well  as  its  sinister  side. 
It  is  a  power  for  good  far  more  than  for  evil ;  and  if 
co-operation  too  often  forgets  the  formidable  power  of 
aggregate  capital,  whether  owned  by  many  or  by  one, 
by  rich  or  poor,  it  too  often  puts  out  of  sight  the 
noble  functions  which  capital  in  a  single  hand  can 
exert.  As  the  possession  of  vast  and  free  capital  in  a 
single  skilful  hand  enables  it  to  be  used  with  a  con- 
centration, rapidity,  and  elasticity  which  no  corporate 
capital  can  enjoy ;  so  in  a  conscientious  hand  it  is 
capable  of  yet  more  splendid  acts  of  protection,  pro- 
vidence, and  beneficence.  There  is  nothing  chimerical 
in  such  a  supposition,  and  nothing  degrading  to  those 
who  benefit  by  it.  It  does  not  consist  in  the  giving 
of  money  or  the  distribution  of  patronage.  A  great, 
free,  and  wise  capitalist — and  England  happily  can 
show  some  of  the  noblest  examples — whose  mind  is 
devoted  to  the  worthy  employment  of  his  power,  can 
in  countless  ways,  by  advice,  help,  example,  and 
experience,  promote  the  welfare  of  those  about  him, 
raise  their  material  comfort,  their  domestic  happiness, 
their  education,  their  health,  their  whole  physical  and 
moral  condition  ;  can  act  almost  as  a  providence  on 
earth,  and  that  by  means  as  honourable  for  them  to 
receive  as  for  him  to  use. 

Every  one  knows  that  some  of  the  largest  estates, 
and  some  very  large  manufactories  in  this  country,  are 
now  successfully  carried  on  in  a  spirit  which  provides 


368     NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

in  a  very  high  degree  for  the  welfare  of  all  concerned. 
The  feeling  of  honest  pride,  confidence,  and  goodwill 
with  which  these  efforts  are  met  on  the  part  of  tenants 
and  workmen,  is  as  elevating  to  them  as  it  is  to  their 
employers.  It  would  be  a  perversion  of  mind  which 
could  see  anything  mean  in  so  noble  a  relation  as  this. 
It  would  be  preposterous  to  suppose  that  the  sense  of 
duty  could  be  as  lively  and  personal  on  one  side  or  the 
other,  where  the  capital  is  owned  by  a  company.  No 
responsible  manager  of  a  society  could  feel  or  venture 
to  show  the  same  munificent  care  for  his  people  that 
many  landlords  and  many  manufacturers  now  do.  No 
association  could  or  would  be  ever  voting  sums  for 
those  benevolent  purposes  which  the  conscientious 
capitalist  carries  out  day  by  day.  As  little  could  it  do 
so  as  the  Board  of  Admiralty  could  inspire  the  sense 
of  sympathy  and  devotion  which  binds  a  captain 
like  Nelson  to  his  men.  This  is  a  conviction  almost 
as  old  as  society  itself,  which  it  needs  more  now  than 
some  phrases  about  "Self-Help"  and  "Mutual  Co- 
operation "  to  eradicate. 

Socialism,  it  is  true,  and  still  more  Communism, 
did  claim  to  substitute  for  this  spirit  another  as  strong, 
or  even  stronger.  But  that  was  by  boldly  recon- 
structing the  social  system,  by  instilling  new  habits, 
and  instituting  a  moral  education.  But  the  bastard 
Communism- — of  breaking  capital  into  bits  —  which 
some  advocate  as  true  co-operation,  leaves  the  whole 
force  of  these  sentiments  out  of  sight.  It  weakens  the 
power  of  capital  for  good  far  more  than  it  weakens  its 
power  for  evil.  The  morality  and  education  of  capital 
it  passes  by.  It  subdivides  it,  but  does  nothing  to 
elevate  it.  Right,  useful,  necessary  often,  as  the 
principle  of  association  and  co-operation  is,  indispensable 
as  it  may  be  as  an  adjunct  and  resting-point,  it  will 
still  remain  as  true  as  ever,  that  on  any  large  scale, 


INDUSTRIAL  CO-OPERATION       369 

and  for  the  highest  uses,  concentrated  and  not  associated 
capital  will  command  the  greatest  practical  success, 
and  develop  the  most  noble  moral  features  both  in 
employer  and  employed.1 

It  may  be  asked,  is  there  any  need  so  closely  to 
criticise  a  spontaneous  economic  movement  which  has 
an  obvious  practical  value  ?  Is  it  necessary  again  to 
repeat  objections  against  Socialism  as  a  system  ?  The 
answer  is  that  there  is  real  need  for  it.  The  co- 
operative system  is  so  great  a  success  that  any  illusions 
about  it  would  be  very  dangerous.  It  is  now  absorb- 
ing men  of  such  high  qualities  and  influence,  that  if 
not  well  directed  it  will  prove  positively  pernicious ; 
and  especially  so,  since  it  is  being  advocated  with  such 
exclusive  claims  and  such  extravagant  language  as  befit 
only  a  new  social  system.  The  present  writer  yields 
to  none  in  his  warm  sympathy  and  respect  for  the 
movement  as  regards  the  "  stores "  and  associated 
artificers.  He  knows  and  has  seen  how  very  much 
good  it  is  doing.  But  that  good  is  wholly  dependent  on 
its  true  limit  and  use  being  understood,  and  he  has  long 
seen  with  regret  that  some  of  the  very  best  leaders  and 
friends  of  the  working  classes  are  throwing  themselves 
exclusively  into  it,  as  if  it  were  a  new  gospel,  destined 
to  revolutionise  the  conditions  of  industry.  As  apply- 

1  It  will  be  seen  that  no  notice  is  here  taken  of  the  system  originating 
in  Paris,  advocated  by  Mr.  Mill,  and  adopted  by  Messrs.  Briggs  and 
Messrs.  Crossley,  in  which  a  portion  of  the  profits  is  freely  given  by  the 
capitalist  to  the  labourer,  or  a  share  in  the  capital  is  made  over  to  him. 
This,  the  most  hopeful  fact  in  our  industrial  system,  the  best  of  all 
schemes  of  industrial  improvement,  is  not  co-operation  at  all.  It  wants 
every  feature  of  co-operation.  It  is  not  self-help  by  the  people,  for  it  is 
a  wise  and  spontaneous  act  of  munificence  from  the  capitalist.  No 
efforts  of  the  labourers  can  advance  its  introduction.  The  capital  is 
not  subdivided,  but  remains  practically  in  one  hand.  The  management 
is  not  democratic,  but  remains  also  in  one  hand.  The  labourers  are  not 
partners,  and  have  no  control  for  good  or  evil  over  the  concern.  It  is 
the  free  gift  of  a  bonus  to  the  labourer — a  wise,  a  just,  and  a  promising 
system — but  not  co-operation  (1865). 

2  B 


370    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

ing  on  any  large  scale  to  manufacturers,  it  seems  to 
the  writer  a  feeble  echo  of  Socialism,  with  many  of  its 
defects  and  few  of  its  ennobling  aims.  On  this  side 
it  is  a  crude  compromise  between  the  claims  of  labour 
and  of  capital — the  hybrid  child  of  Plutonomy  and 
Communism. 

Things  which  are  very  good  and  useful  when  quite 
spontaneous,  become  very  bad  and  noxious  when 
fanned  into  a  movement  and  preached  as  a  revelation. 
The  Temperance  principle  has  done  good  service  ; 
but  as  a  Teetotalist  fanaticism  it  does  positive  harm. 
It  is  a  most  useful  thing  and  a  most  hopeful  fact,  that 
many  working  men's  families  should  have  a  small 
saving  for  a  rainy  day.  But  there  is  no  need  for 
special  exultation  that  a  great  many  working  men 
become  shopkeepers  or  small  employers.  And  a  true 
friend  of  labour  may  well  listen  with  dismay  and 
disgust  to  the  appeals  of  an  organised  propaganda  "  to 
save  society  by  making  money."  There  exists  un- 
luckily a  systematic  agitation  which  has  developed  a 
special  cant  of  its  own,  by  which  the  working  men  are 
beset,  the  burden  of  the  cry  being,  Save — economise — 
accumulate — grow  rich.  "  I  do  beseech  you,"  cries  a 
co-operative  lecturer,  "  to  unite  yourselves  together, 
with  the  determination  to  benefit  yourselves  by  laying 
out  your  money  to  the  best  advantage."  This  is  but 
the  spirit  of  a  thousand  addresses,  tracts,  and  articles. 
There  has  grown  up  an  entire  class  of  professional 
agitators,  from  whom  nothing  solid  or  practical  is  ever 
heard  but  exhortations  to  make  money,  and  hints  how 
to  make  money  quickly.  It  is  a  good  thing  to  grow 
rich — honestly  and  naturally.  But  to  preach,  implore, 
and  excite  men  to  grow  rich  is  a  very  bad  thing. 

It  used  to  be  said  by  them  of  old  time  that  the 
love  of  money  was  the  root  of  all  evil.  Foolish  as  this 
was,  it  is  hardly  true  that  money  is  the  root  of  all 


INDUSTRIAL  CO-OPERATION        371 

good.  I  do  not  scruple  to  say  that  this  is  too  often 
the  tone  of  the  professional  propagandist,  and  that 
much  of  his  teaching  is  morally  debasing.  There  is 
not  one  moral  standard  for  the  rich  and  another  for 
the  poor.  And  to  teach  and  preach  to  the  poor  the 
paramount  duty  of  getting  money  is  as  demoralising 
as  to  preach  it  to  the  rich.  A  little  money,  if  they 
come  by  it  in  natural  course,  may  be  useful  and 
essential  to  their  well-being;  but  for  them  to  be 
always  thinking  of  making  a  little,  and  then  of 
making  that  little  more  ;  ever  to  be  dealing  in  shares, 
dividend,  or  interest ;  to  believe  that  by  so  doing  they 
are  working  out  their  own  "  elevation "  and  their 
orders'  regeneration,  would  be  a  pitiable  self-delusion. 
For  this  reason  there  is  no  modern  movement  more 
full  of  moral  danger  than  this.  The  temperance,  the 
educational,  the  club  movement,  all  have  and  advocate 
a  definite  moral  object.  The  co-operative  easily 
degenerates  into  the  basest  material  end.  Material 
efforts  are  no  less  necessary  than  moral  efforts, — for 
the  moment  are  often  more  so  ;  but  only  in  so  far  as 
men  recognise  and  remember  their  temporary  and 
subordinate  uses. 

The  co-operative  advocate  will  insist  that  many 
incidental  objects,  many  moral  precepts,  are  invariably 
united  with  the  material  aim.  It  is  so,  and  the  move- 
ment would  be  a  poor  one  indeed  if  there  were  not 
this  union.  But  co-operation  must  stand  or  fall  by 
that  which  is  its  direct  principal  purpose.  A  material 
aim  is  a  good,  provided  it  keeps  its  place.  And  the 
direct,  main,  and  only  accomplished  object  of  co- 
operation, as  a  system,  is  to  make  money.  This  is 
but  slightly  modified  by  the  incidental  aims  j  and  its 
character  is  not  changed  by  vague  appeals  to  good 
feeling,  by  social  celebrations,  by  devoting  I  per  cent 
out  of  dividends  for  education,  by  opening  a  reading- 


372    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

room,  and  by  subscribing  ^5  to  the  Co-operator.  None 
of  these  rest  on  any  defined  principle,  are  in  the  least 
systematic  or  generally  accepted,  or  have  been  ever 
worked  up  into  practical  standing  rules.  They  are 
just  as  compatible  in  theory  with  a  railway  company 
as  with  a  "  store."  The  shareholders  of  any  business, 
if  they  were  good-natured  people,  would  do  as  much 
and  more.  What  co-operation  does  teach  emphatic- 
ally, consistently,  perpetually,  and  ably  is  how  to 
make  a  thriving  business.  It  has  worked  out  an 
admirably  ingenious  and  prudent  system  of  rules  to 
increase  dividends  and  to  reduce  expenditure.  As  a 
commercial  system,  it  is  a  masterpiece  of  sagacious 
contrivances,  and  rests  in  principle  on  the  plainest  and 
most  consistent  logic.  By  this  alone  can  it  claim  to 
be  a  system.  What  it  has  not  yet  done  is  to  produce 
in  twenty  years  one  plain  case  of  labour  being 
employed  on  juster  and  more  favourable  principles 
than  it  is,  or  indeed  on  any  principles  but  those  of 
competition  ;  or  even  to  elaborate  or  suggest  any 
rational  scheme  for  employing  labour  on  new  condi- 
tions, or  for  placing  the  use  of  capital  on  a  sounder 
and  higher  moral  basis.1 

1  A  curious  proof  how  little  co-operation  provides  or  suggests  on  the 
grand  industrial  question  of  making  the  use  of  capital  consistent  with 
social  obligations,  may  be  found  in  the  following  catechism,  printed  in 
the  Co-operator,  as  part  of  a  lecture,  by  its  indefatigable  editor,  Mr. 
Pitman,  the  most  active  and  most  eminent  of  the  co-operative  apostles  : — 

CO-OPERATIVE  CATECHISM. 

'  What  is  your  Name  ? 

'  Co-operation. 

'  Who  ga-ve  you  this  Namt  ? 

'  My  godfathers  and  godmothers,  the  Rochdale  Pioneers,  by  whom  I 
was  made  prudent,  provident,  and  persevering. 

'  What  did  your  godfathers  and  godmothers  do  for  you  f 

'  They  did  promise  and  vow  three  things  in  my  name  :  First,  that  I 
should  renounce  'the  public,'  and  all  its  ways,  the  pomps  and  vanities  of 
this  wicked  world,  and  all  the  sinful  lusts  of  the  flesh.  Secondly,  that 


INDUSTRIAL  CO-OPERATION       373 

If  this  is  true,  working  men  will  not  long  trust 
implicitly  in  a  system  which  however  useful  is  very 
partial  and  essentially  subordinate.  They,  of  all 
others,  know  the  social  consequences  of  a  systematic 
spirit  of  money  -  making.  Co-operators  are  fond  of 
homely  proverbs,  and  they  may  well  reflect  on  the 
value  of  a  specific  which  consists  "of  a  hair  from  the 
dog  that  bit  them."  They  are  also  fond  of  an 
apologue,  and  may  think  of  one  of  the  most  ancient 
and  the  wisest  of  all  apologues — the  immortal  fable  of 
the  "  Belly  and  the  members."  Would  it  be  a  rational 
remedy  for  disorder  of  the  digestive  system  if  the 
members  were,  not  to  starve,  but  to  parcel  out  the 
stomach  in  bits  amongst  them  ?  All  the  social  misery 
which  is  caused  to  the  workmen  by  the  rage  of 
amassing  capital  is  not  likely  to  be  extinguished  by  a 

I  should  believe  my  own  principles.  And,  Thirdly,  that  I  should  act  as 
if  I  did,  by  keeping  down  expenses,  buying  in  the  cheapest  market,  and 
giving  no  credit  without  ample  security. 

"  Dost  thou  not  think  that  thou  art  bound  to  believe  and  do  as  the  Rochdale 
Pioneers  have  promised  fcr  thee  ? 

"  Yes,  verily  :  and  by  the  reciprocal  help  of  the  shareholders  and  other 
customers  I  will  j  and  I  heartily  thank  my  northern  friends  that  they 
have  called  me  into  this  happy  condition,  through  the  instrumentality  of 
their  principles.  And  I  hope  to  illustrate  those  principles  by  continual 
practice  unto  my  life's  end. 

"  Rehearse  the  articles  of  thy  belief. 

"  I  believe  that  honesty  is  the  best  policy  5  that  'tis  a  very  good  world 
we  live  in,  to  lend,  or  to  spend,  or  to  give  in  ;  but  to  beg,  or  to  borrow, 
or  get  a  man's  own,  'tis  the  very  worst  world  that  ever  was  known.  I 
believe  in  good  weight  and  measure,  in  unadulterated  articles,  in  cash 
payments,  and  in  small  profits  and  quick  returns.  I  also  believe  in  the 
maxim  '  live  and  let  live '  j  in  free  trade ;  and,  in  short,  that  my  duty 
towards  my  neighbour  is  to  love  him  as  myself,  and  to  do  to  all  men  as 
I  would  they  should  do  unto  me. 

"  What  dost  thou  chiefly  learn  in  these  articles  of  thy  belief? 

"  First,  I  learn  the  folly  of  being  a  slave,  when  I  may  be  free. 
Secondly,  I  learn  to  save  my  money,  as  well  as  earn  it.  And,  Thirdly, 
I  learn  how  best  to  spend  it." 

This  is  sensible  advice  with  a  few  copybook  saws  worthy  of  a  village 
schoolmaster  ;  but  it  is  not  a  system  of  social  justice,  or  a  system  of 
anything  (1865). 


374     NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

few  hundred  thousand  workmen  becoming  small 
capitalists.  There  is  nothing  in  co-operation  per  se 
which  is  to  prevent  a  thriving  co-operative  company 
from  consisting  of  the  most  selfish  and  unscrupulous 
men  on  earth.  Capitalists  by  the  very  conditions  of 
human  nature  will  not  be  day-labourers.  And  the 
fact  that  10  per  cent  of  the  working  men  should  raise 
themselves  out  of  their  class  by  ceasing  to  be  labourers 
is  an  evil  rather  than  a  good.  The  working  man  who 
does  so  is  generally  no  favourable  specimen  of  his 
order.  The  facilities  and  taste  for  this  species  of  rise 
in  life,  this  displacement  of  class,  form  a  very  real  evil. 
They  are  generally  bought  at  the  price  of  true  moral 
and  mental  development.  Regularity  and  security  of 
position  are  the  conditions  most  favourable  to  the 
welfare  and  elevation  of  the  working  man,  not  a  rage 
for  speculation  and  visions  of  possible  wealth.  Let 
him  consider  the  following  words  of  Comte  :— 
"  Governments,  whether  retrograde  or  constitutional, 
have  done  all  they  could  to  divert  the  people  from 
their  true  social  function  (participation  in  public  life) 
by  affording  opportunities  for  individuals  among  them 
to  rise  to  higher  positions.  The  moneyed  classes, 
under  the  influence  of  blind  routine,  have  lent  their 
aid  to  this  degrading  policy  by  continually  preaching 
to  the  people  the  necessity  of  saving  :  a  precept  which 
is  indeed  incumbent  on  their  own  class,  but  not  on 
others.  Without  saving,  capital  could  not  be  accumu- 
lated and  administered  ;  it  is,  therefore,  of  the  highest 
importance  that  the  moneyed  classes  should  be  as 
economical  as  possible.  But  in  other  classes,  and 
especially  in  those  dependent  on  fixed  wages,  parsi- 
monious habits  are  uncalled  for  and  injurious  ;  they 
lower  the  character  of  the  labourer,  while  they  do  little 
or  nothing  to  improve  his  physical  condition  ;  and  neither 
the  working  classes  nor  their  teachers  should  encourage 


INDUSTRIAL  CO-OPERATION       375 

them.  Both  the  one  and  the  other  will  find  their 
truest  happiness  in  keeping  clear  of  all  practical  re- 
sponsibility, and  in  allowing  free  play  to  their  mental 
and  moral  faculties  in  public  as  well  as  private  life." 

What,  then,  are  our  practical  conclusions  ?  They 
are  these  :  that  the  co-operative  system,  as  applied  to 
the  retail  of  food  and  clothing,  and  to  small  bodies  of 
associated  workmen,  is  a  most  sound,  strong,  and 
valuable  method  of  adding  to  the  material  well-being 
of  the  working  classes.  As  such  it  deserves  all  good- 
will and  confidence,  and  undoubtedly  has  a  large  and 
bright  future  of  usefulness  before  it.  But  co-operation, 
as  spreading  grand  social  truths,  or  as  applied  to  large 
capitals  and  complex  industries — in  a  word,  to  Pro- 
duction— has  riot  stood,  and  will  not  stand,  its  ground. 
As  a  social  system,  it  has  developed  nothing  that  is  not 
at  once  crude  and  vague  j  and  the  earnest  spirits 
amongst  the  working  and  educated  classes  (often  of 
some  shade  of  Socialism)  who  support  it  on  this  ground, 
should  reflect  that  it  has  done  nothing  to  grapple  with 
the  problems  that  Socialism  propounds  j  that  it  has 
done  and  taught  nothing  definite,  except  how  to  buy 
well  and  how  to  save  money.  As  applied  to  the 
higher  manufactures  it  is  doubtless  capable,  in  special 
cases,  of  a  very  large  measure  of  success,  and  may 
often  in  the  battle  of  labour  prove  valuable,  as  a 
temporary  rampart  and  refuge.  It  will  probably 
always  remain  side  by  side  with  individual  capital,  as 
a  vigorous  rival  and  check.  Success,  however,  neces- 
sarily alters  the  character  of  co-operative  manufactures, 
and  extinguishes  their  social  purpose  by  converting  the 
workmen  into  simple  shareholders. 

Co-operation  is  deeply  rooted,  and  may  now  prosper 
by  itself.  To  fan  it  into  factitious  activity  may 
prove  a  dangerous  social  nuisance.  The  Gospel 
according  to  Mammon  will  preach  itself,  and  can  do 


376    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

without  the  assistance  of  philosophers  and  reformers. 
The  working  men  and  their  advisers  who  .are  really 
bent  on  social  progress,  well  know  that  this  comes 
only  of  a  truer  civilisation,  of  a  more  vigorous  morality, 
of  a  wider  education,  of  a  deeper  moral  tone,  of  healthier 
domestic  life,  more  temperance,  unity,  moderation,  self- 
respect  amongst  employed,  more  sense  of  duty,  more 
justice,  more  benevolence  amongst  employers,  more 
sympathy  and  unselfishness  amongst  both.  Were  a 
higher  education  of  mind  and  feeling  universal  amongst 
workmen,  they  could  elevate  their  own  condition  in- 
definitely. Were  it  universal  amongst  capitalists,  they 
would  do  so  spontaneously.  Moral  and  mental  educa- 
tion then,  and  a  systematic  promotion  of  it,  and  a 
power  to  concentrate  and  direct  opinion,  is  the  one 
thing  truly  needful  in  this  and  in  all  other  social 
wants.  This  is  the  true  "self-help  by  the  people," 
and  not  the  making  of  dividends,  and  compound 
interest  on  capital.  This  is  the  only  means  by  which 
the  working  classes  can  elevate  themselves,  and  it  is  a 
fraud  to  tell  them  that  Co-operation  offers  them  this 
in  any  serious  or  regular  way.  Everything  that  puts 
this  out  of  sight,  and  blinds  men  to  its  paramount 
importance,  is  an  evil.  It  is  because  Co-operation 
seems  tending  to  do  so,  that  the  writer  has  criticised 
it  as  unreservedly  and  openly  as  he  has  previously 
criticised  capital.  If  Co-operation  were  ever  to 
supplant,  in  the  interest  and  hopes  of  working  men, 
these  other  and  far  higher  requirements,  it  would 
become  a  real  source  of  social  demoralisation.  In 
itself  it  is  good,  provided  it  be  natural,  and  provided 
it  keep  its  place.  But  far  other  things  are  needful 
on  which  Co-operation  can  offer  nothing  definite,  or 
only  as  a  make-weight.  These  things,  co-operators 
may  be  told,  they  ought  to  have  done,  and  not  to 
have  left  the  other  undone. 


IV 

SOCIAL   REMEDIES 

(1885) 

In  the  year  1884  Mr.  Robert  Miller  of  Edinburgh,  a  retired 
engineer,  proposed  to  hold  a  public  representative  inquiry 
into  the  causes  of  Industrial  Distress  and  possible  remedies. 
He  offered  £1000  for  the  expenses  of  such  a  Conference 
in  London,  to  embrace  politicians,  capitalists,  statisticians, 
workmen,  and  delegates  from  many  Unions,  Co-operative 
and  Industrial  Societies,  Socialist  and  Reformers'  bodies. 
Together  with  many  Economists,  Unionists,  and  Labour 
Associations  we  organised  a  Conference  of  more  than  one 
hundred  delegates,  who  met  during  January  1885  in 
the  Prince's  Hall  under  the  Presidency  of  Sir  Charles 
Dilke. 

The  question  proposed  was  as  follows  : — 
Would  the  more  general  distribution  of  Capital  or 
Land,  or  the   State  management  of  Capital  or   Land, 
promote   or   impair   the  production   of  wealth  and  the 
welfare  of  the  community  ? 

A  variety  of  papers  were  read  and  discussed  by  men 
representing  nearly  all  the  various  forms  of  Economic  and 
Socialist  schools,  by  men  as  widely  separated  in  opinion  as 
were  Mr.  Arthur  J.  Balfour  and  Mr.  John  Burns,  as 
were  Lord  Brassey  and  Professor  Francis  Newman  and 
Professor  Alfred  R.  Wallace. 

377 


378   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

From  the  volume  entitled  The  Industrial  Remunera- 
tion Conference,  which  reported  all  the  papers  and  the 
discussions,  I  extract  my  own  address,  which  embodied  the 
views  on  the  Labour  problem  of  our  Positivist  School 
(1908}. 

WE  have  before  us  two  methods  proposed  for  the 
reorganisation  of  the  industrial  system  : — the  first,  by 
the  more  general  distribution  of  Capital  and  of  Land  ; 
the  second,  by  the  State  management  of  Capital  and 
of  Land.  These  two  plans  are  in  violent  contrast 
with  each  other.  The  former  is  merely  an  extension 
of  the  present  social  system,  multiplying  the  holders  of 
private  property,  imposing  on  private  property  no  new 
checks  or  duties,  proposing  nothing  subversive  of  our 
ordinary  habits,  and  nothing  but  what  is  common  in 
many  countries  in  the  Old  and  New  World.  The 
second  plan  involves  an  entire  revolution  in  the  social 
system  ;  it  would  abolish,  or  at  least  recast,  the  oldest 
institution  of  civilisation,  private  property ;  and  it 
proposes  an  industrial  system  which  probably  has 
never  at  any  time  been  at  work  on  any  large  scale  on 
the  face  of  the  earth. 

But  before  we  can  properly  consider  any  large 
scheme  for  the  reorganisation  of  our  industrial  system, 
we  must  first  be  prepared  with  at  least  a  general 
answer  to  the  wider  question  :  "  Does  our  industrial 
system  need  to  be  reorganised  at  all  ? "  I  shall 
simply  indicate  my  own  answer  to  this  question,  and 
shall  then  consider  the  two  alternative  proposals  for 
reform  ;  giving  in  each  case  results,  conclusions,  and 
general  estimates,  the  outcome  of  my  own  experiences 
and  studies.  I  have  now  for  twenty-five  years  occu- 
pied myself  with  these  industrial  problems  in  their 
various  phases,  in  personal  contact  with  the  move- 
ments and  their  leading  exponents  or  directors  :  trades 
unions,  workmen's  clubs,  benefit  societies,  co-operation, 


SOCIAL  REMEDIES  379 

industrial  partnerships,  land  nationalisation,  socialism, 
communism.  Time  does  not  permit  me  to  enter 
into  details  or  systematic  review  of  arguments.  I 
shall  seek  only  to  lay  before  the  Conference  my  final 
conclusions  and  suggestions. 

"  Does  our  industrial  system  need  to  be  re- 
organised ?  "  or  in  words  which  originated  this 
Conference,  "  Is  the  present  manner  whereby  the 
products  of  industry  are  distributed  satisfactory  ? " 
I  cannot  myself  understand  how  any  one  who  knows 
what  the  present  manner  is,  can  think  that  it  is 
satisfactory.  To  me  at  least  it  would  be  enough 
to  condemn  modern  society  as  hardly  an  advance 
on  slavery  or  serfdom,  if  the  permanent  condition  of 
industry  were  to  be  that  which  we  behold,  that  90  per 
cent  of  the  actual  producers  of  wealth  have  no  home 
that  they  can  call  their  own  beyond  the  end  of  the 
week  ;  have  no  bit  of  soil,  or  so  much  as  a  room,  that 
belongs  to  them ;  have  nothing  of  value  of  any  kind, 
except  as  much  old  furniture  as  will  go  in  a  cart ; 
have  the  precarious  chance  of  weekly  wages,  which 
barely  suffice  to  keep  them  in  health  ;  are  housed  for 
the  most  part  in  places  that  no  man  thinks  fit  for 
his  horse  ;  are  separated  by  so  narrow  a  margin  from 
destitution,  that  a  month  of  bad  trade,  sickness,  or 
unexpected  loss,  brings  them  face  to  face  with  hunger 
and  pauperism. 

In  cities,  the  increasing  organisation  of  factory 
work  makes  life  more  and  more  crowded,  and  work 
more  and  more  a  monotonous  routine  ;  in  the  country, 
the  increasing  pressure  makes  rural  life  continually 
less  free,  healthful,  and  cheerful ;  whilst  the  prizes 
and  hopes  of  betterment  are  now  reduced  to  a 
minimum.  This  is  the  normal  state  of  the  average 
workman  in  town  or  country,  to  which  we  must 
add  the  record  of  preventable  disease,  accident,  suffer- 


380    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

ing,  and  social  oppression  with  its  immense  yearly 
roll  of  death  and  misery.  But  below  this  normal 
state  of  the  average  workman,  there  is  found  the 
great  band  of  the  destitute  outcasts  —  the  camp- 
followers  of  the  army  of  industry  —  at  least  one- 
tenth  of  the  whole  proletarian  population,  whose 
normal  condition  is  one  of  sickening  wretchedness. 
If  this  is  to  be  the  permanent  arrangement  of  modern 
society,  civilisation  must  be  held  to  bring  a  curse  on 
the  great  majority  of  mankind. 

Is  the  relative  area  of  this  extreme  misery  growing 
wider  or  smaller  ?  Is  the  normal  state  of  the  average 
workman  growing  better  or  worse  ?  Is  the  general 
lot  of  the  upper  ranks  of  the  workmen  rising  or 
falling  ?  Taking  England  and  our  own  generation 
only,  I  have  little  doubt  that  there  is  some  improve- 
ment in  all.  The  proportion  of  the  utterly  destitute 
is  distinctly,  however  slowly,  diminishing.  The 
average  workman,  on  the  whole,  has  gained  in  money- 
values  a  real  advance.  The  fortunate  minority  of 
the  most  highly  skilled  workmen  have  gained  very 
considerably.  The  figures  arrayed  by  consummate 
economists  are  far  too  complete  to  be  doubted.  But 
then  this  question  is  by  no  means  settled  by  figures. 
After  all  has  been  said  as  to  the  rise  of  wages,  as  to 
the  fall  of  prices,  as  to  the  cheapening  of  bread  and 
other  necessaries,  there  comes  in  a  series  of  questions  as 
to  housing,  as  to  permanence  of  employment,  as  to  the 
general  conditions  of  life  in  cities  ever  more  crowded, 
and  in  country  ever  more  and  more  enclosed,  as  to  the 
nature  of  industry  in  the  sum.  These  are  questions 
that  cannot  be  settled  by  statistics  and  comparative 
tables.  It  is  impossible  to  balance  a  gain  of  2d.  on 
the  quartern  loaf  against  the  growing  unhealthiness 
and  discomforts  of  an  increasing  city.  No  one  can 
say  if  another  id.  per  hour  in  wages  is  the  equivalent 


SOCIAL  REMEDIES  381 

of  increased  strain  in  the  industrial  mill.  No  one  can 
exactly  value  all  the  rush  and  squeeze  of  modern 
organised  industry  against  the  personal  freedom  of 
the  old  unorganised  labour. 

These  things  one  has  to  judge  in  the  concrete,  and 
my  own  judgment  is  this :  the  fortunate  minority 
have  gained,  even  in  the  sum  total,  at  least  as  much  as 
any  other  class  in  the  community  ;  and  they  are  in 
the  ascendant,  in  the  way  to  gain  more,  both  positively 
and  relatively.  This  is  due  mainly,  I  hold,  to  their 
trades  unions  and  mutual  societies.  The  average 
majority  of  workmen  have,  in  the  sum  total,  gained 
a  little  ;  but  far  less  than  the  rich  or  the  middle- 
classes.  And  that  little  has  been  gained  at  the 
expense  of  some  evils  which  are  hardly  compatible 
with  civilisation.  The  destitute  residuum  is,  if  rela- 
tively diminishing,  positively  increasing  in  numbers  ; 
and,  under  the  pressure  of  modern  organised  life,  is 
in  a  condition  of  appalling  barbarism.  Taking  the 
general  condition  of  the  producers  of  wealth  as  a 
whole,  it  is  improving,  but  somewhat  slowly,  and 
even  the  improvement  is  of  so  moderate  a  kind,  and 
is  accompanied  with  evils  so  menacing  to  society,  that 
the  future  of  civilisation  itself  is  at  stake.  And  herein 
I  join  hands  with  very  much  that  is  said  by  the  earnest 
men  of  the  genuine  Socialist  schools,  so  far  as  they 
point  out  the  evils  and  dangers  of  our  actual  system. 

In  particular,  I  heartily  sympathise  with  the  critical 
portions  of  Mr.  Henry  George's  writings,  especially  in 
his  latest  work,  Social  Problems.  That  book  seems 
to  me  a  very  powerful,  and,  in  the  main,  a  very  just, 
exposure  of  the  evils  of  our  industrial  system  ;  though 
I  look  on  his  pretended  panacea  as  chimerical  and 
futile.  But  Mr.  George,  whose  genius  and  courage 
I  cordially  admire,  has  introduced  one  very  important 
consideration.  He  has  proved,  or  rather  directed  our 


382    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

attention  to  this,  viz.,  that  the  evils  long  familiar  to 
all  in  the  industrial  system  of  Europe  are  already  in 
full  operation  in  America  and  other  new  societies  ; 
that  they  grow  up  with  wonderful  rapidity  within  a 
generation  under  conditions  utterly  different  from  those 
of  Europe  ;  that  they  are  found  in  primitive  com- 
munities, in  democratic  republics,  in  societies  where 
virgin  soil,  unbounded  liberty,  limitless  space,  social 
equality,  and  an  absence  of  all  traditions,  restrictions, 
or  hindrances  whatever,  leave  an  unorganised  crowd  of 
free  men  face  to  face  with  Nature.  It  is  impossible, 
therefore,  to  attribute  these  evils  to  Government, 
social  institutions,  laws,  or  historical  conditions. 
They  are  the  direct  growth  of  modern  industrial 
habits ;  and  they  develop  with  portentous  rapidity 
directly  industry  finds  a  field  wherein  to  organise 
itself,  even  in  the  most  free  and  the  most  new  of  all 
modern  societies.  Mr.  George,  I  say,  has  shown  us 
that  the  evils  of  our  industrial  system  are  the  direct 
product  of  the  industrial  system  itself. 

This  spectacle  of  the  growth  of  free  industry  in 
America  affords  a  sufficient  answer  to  those  who  call 
out  for  absolute  freedom  from  State  interference.  In 
the  United  States  we  have  State  interference  at  its 
minimum,  and  the  freedom  and  independence  of  the 
individual  citizen  at  its  maximum.  And  this  seems 
precisely  the  field  where  industry  breeds  the  evils  of 
the  industrial  system  with  the  greatest  rapidity.  It 
is  here,  where  the  State  does  the  least,  and  where  the 
individual  is  most  independent,  that  we  have  colossal 
accidents,  gigantic  frauds,  organised  plunder,  systematic 
adulteration,  the  greatest  insecurity  of  property  and  of 
person,  and  commerce  fast  reducing  itself  to  a  science 
of  swindling.  This  should  be  enough  to  warn  us  that 
it  is  impossible  to  make  an  absolute  principle  of  the 
doctrine  of  non-interference.  Where  the  State  can 


SOCIAL  REMEDIES  383 

usefully  interfere,  and  where  it  cannot,  is  for  each 
society  a  matter  to  be  discovered  by  practical  experi- 
ment. 

The  sticklers  for  absolute  respect  for  Liberty  and 
Property  have  not  the  courage  of  their  doctrines.  If 
they  are  logical  they  should  ask  for  the  abolition 
of  all  legislation  against  truck,  dangerous  structures  or 
practices,  unhealthy  buildings,  oppressive  regulations, 
and  fraudulent  devices  of  any  kind.  They  ought  even 
to  call  for  the  abolition  of  all  inspection,  all  compulsion, 
all  monopolies,  and  all  State  manufactures,  or  even 
regulation  of  industry  in  any  form.  Cab-drivers  would 
be  free  to  charge  the  unwary  what  they  pleased ;  girls 
and  boys  would  be  ill-used  in  any  way  short  of  open 
violence.  The  population  would  grow  up  a  prey  to 
small -pox  and  all  infectious  diseases  ;  the  children 
would  be  untaught  ;  salesmen  would  be  free  to  falsify 
their  weights  and  measures,  and  to  adulterate  their 
goods  without  check  ;  sailors  would  be  drowned,  pit- 
men blown  to  cinders,  and  trains  wrecked  entirely  at 
the  mercy  of  certain  owners ;  and  we  should  have  to 
forward  our  own  letters,  and  (why  not  ?)  protect  our 
own  houses  ourselves. 

Society  would  be  dissolved  in  the  name  of  the  sacred 
rights  of  self-help  and  property.  The  limits  of  age, 
sex,  or  special  industry  have  no  abstract  force,  apart 
from  convenience.  If  it  degrades  a  man  to  have  State 
protection,  it  must  degrade  a  woman  ;  if  it  is  good  for 
a  young  person  of  14  to  be  under  compulsion  or 
inspection,  it  cannot  be  so  evil  for  a  young  person 
of  1 8  or  20  to  be  so  also.  If  there  be  any  absolute 
doctrine  of  non-interference,  the  age  of  12,  14,  17,  or 
21  cannot  override  it;  nor  does  a  factory  girl  of  16 
differ  so  much  from  a  factory  lad  of  16,  or  even  of  21. 
Once  show  a  few  cases  where  State  control  has 
certainly  made  industrial  life  a  little  more  human,  and 


384    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

checked  some  forms  of  misery,  and  the  abstract 
doctrine  of  non-interference  is  blown  to  the  winds. 
But  cases  of  successful  State  control  abound  in  all 
societies,  and  notably  in  ours.  The  rule  of  caveat 
emptor  is  perfectly  observed  only  by  savages. 

I  turn  to  the  first  alternative  proposal,  the  more 
general  distribution  of  capital  and  land.  No  one  who 
knows  the  working  man,  so  to  speak,  at  home,  can 
doubt  how  great  an  advance  in  well-being  and  inde- 
pendence is  the  possession  of  a  little  capital,  a  bit  of 
land,  however  small.  Only  those  who  do  know  him 
at  home  can  truly  judge  how  great  an  advance  it  is. 
The  workmen  of  such  cities  as  Rochdale,  Halifax, 
Huddersfield,  Leeds,  Newcastle,  and  Oldham,  where 
the  unions,  the  co-operative,  building,  and  benefit 
societies  are  in  strong  force,  are  in  an  altogether 
different  world  from  that  of  the  average  town  and 
country  labourer,  who  on  a  Friday  night  is  the  owner 
at  most  of  a  few  shillings  and  five  pounds'  worth  of 
old  furniture.  The  co-operative  societies,  with  their 
twenty-six  millions  sterling  of  annual  sales,  are  only 
one  and  the  best  known  of  the  many  agencies.  The 
trades  unions,  with  their  large  reserve  funds,  and  their 
accident,  sickness,  and  out-of-work  benefits,  are  but 
another  mode  of  securing  to  workmen  some  of  the 
advantages  of  reserve  capital.  All  the  various  forms 
of  insurance  and  benefit  societies,  the  land  and  building 
societies,  do  the  same. 

The  prudent,  energetic  workman  of  our  northern 
industrial  districts,  who  can  afford  to  take  advantage 
of  all  the  mutual  benefit  associations  available  to  him, 
may  be  said  to  be  in  a  position  of  something  like 
security  and  comfort.  If  he  is  sick,  out  of  work,  or 
meets  with  an  accident  to  himself  or  his  tools,  he  is 
not  forced  to  pawn  his  bedding  j  when  he  is  super- 
annuated, he  is  not  driven  to  the  poorhouse  ;  when  he 


SOCIAL  REMEDIES  385 

dies,  he  is  not  buried  by  the  parish.  He  gets  whole- 
some food,  good  clothing,  and  furniture  at  wholesale 
prices  ;  he  has  a  good  library  and  club,  a  night  school, 
and  an  annual  holiday  ;  and  he  comes  to  be  master  of 
a  house  and  garden  of  his  own.  This  is  the  bright 
side  of  the  picture  ;  but  of  how  few  can  it  be  said  to 
be  true  !  Perhaps,  at  the  most,  of  5  per  cent  of  our 
total  working  population  ;  and  of  that  5  per  cent 
almost  the  whole  are  factory  artisans,  who  alone, 
by  their  higher  wages  and  the  employment  of 
whole  families,  can  afford  the  needful  weekly  sub- 
scriptions. 

With  the  rural  labourer  the  story  is  very  different. 
How  rare  is  the  case  where  he  owns  anything,  or  has 
the  remotest  hope  of  ever  owning  anything  !  Every 
ordinary  misfortune  of  life  —  sickness,  accident,  in- 
firmity, old  age — to  him  means  simply  parochial  relief, 
charity,  the  workhouse.  He  drinks  poisonous  water, 
eats  bad  and  adulterated  food,  lives  a  life  without 
rational  amusement,  without  freedom,  without  hope. 
Compare  the  British  labourer  with  the  peasant  owner 
of  France,  Italy,  Belgium,  Switzerland,  or  America, 
and  he  appears  to  be  at  the  opposite  pole  of  comfort 
and  independence.  It  would  be  wasting  time  to 
multiply  proofs  that  the  more  general  distribution 
of  capital  and  of  land  does  promote  the  welfare  of  the 
labourer.  Every  means  which  contribute  to  that  end 
are,  in  my  judgment,  an  unmixed  good,  whether  they 
take  the  form  of  co-operation,  trades  unions,  benefit, 
building,  insurance,  or  joint-stock  societies,  or  peasant 
occupation  and  holdings.  Nay,  I  go  much  further,  and 
I  insist  that  until  the  working  man — whether  in  town 
or  in  country — has  at  least  as  much  possessory  interest  in 
his  home  as  an  average  middle-class  man  now  has,  and 
until  he  can  count  on  so  much  capital,  or  its  equivalent, 
as  will  keep  him  (if  needs  be)  from  destitution  for  a 

2  C 


386    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

year  at  least,  the  first  conditions  of  civilised  industry 
are  wanting. 

But  the  question  before  us  is  whether  the  re- 
organisation of  industry  and  the  welfare  of  the  com- 
munity are  to  be  found  in  a  general  distribution  of 
capital  and  land.  And  here  we  are  met  by  two 
irresistible  facts.  The  first  is,  that  the  universal 
tendency  of  organised  industry,  rural  or  urban,  is 
towards  the  massing,  and  not  the  dispersion,  of  capital. 
The  highly  specialised  subdivisions  of  all  modern  pro- 
duction, the  increasing  use  of  complex  machinery, 
and  the  greater  economy  of  all  aggregate  operations, 
make  the  massing  of  capital  more  and  more  essential  to 
efficient  production.  In  America  and  in  new  societies, 
even  more  than  in  the  old,  the  same  causes  are  at  work. 
Increased  concentration  of  capital  is  an  indispensable 
condition  of  modern  successful  industry.  Even  in 
rural  England,  where  the  concentration  of  estates 
seems  almost  to  have  reached  a  maximum,  the  con- 
solidation of  farms  goes  on  ;  the  big  industry  is  driving 
out  the  little.  The  ancient  controversies  as  to  great 
and  little  culture  of  land  have  now  ended  in  this :  that 
for  the  largest  production  of  cereals  and  stock  and 
for  the  highest  scientific  farming  the  big-scale  culture 
at  least  is  indispensable,  even  if  the  ownership  be 
subdivided. 

In  urban  industry  no  room  is  left  even  for  debate. 
Collective  industry  has  almost  extinguished  individual 
industry.  Factory  production  has  swallowed  up  home 
production  ;  the  spinning-wheel,  the  hand-loom,  the 
village  workshop,  are  now  the  bows  and  arrows  of 
modern  industry.  The  middleman,  the  chapman,  the 
small  trader,  the  petty  manufacturer,  the  private  banker, 
the  small  builder,  the  •  village  store,  are  every  day 
superseded  by  big  companies,  central  agencies,  or  big 
capitalists  who  are  consolidated  companies  and  agencies, 


SOCIAL  REMEDIES  387 

in  themselves.  In  the  face  of  this  universal  law  of 
modern  industry,  a  law  the  more  conspicuous  the  more 
free  and  virgin  be  the  field  of  industry,  how  idle  would 
it  be  to  look  for  any  regeneration  of  the  industrial 
system  to  a  natural  dispersion  of  capital  or  land  !  In 
the  teeth  of  universal  tendencies  such  as  these,  it  is 
rather  unnatural  to  struggle  for  a  revival  of  the  equable 
distribution  of  capital  and  land  which  marks  the  ruder 
types  of  society. 

The  second  objection  is  a  result  of  the  first.  As 
a  fact,  the  possession  of  capital  and  of  land  is  reached 
only  by  an  insignificant  fraction  of  the  labour  popula- 
tion. After  all  has  been  allowed  for  the  work  done 
by  trades  unions,  co-operation,  benefit  societies,  and 
the  like,  it  touches  only  a  fortunate  few.  Even  the 
most  flourishing  and  progressive  of  these  movements 
hardly  advance  more  rapidly  than  population  and  the 
general  wealth  of  the  community  :  in  other  words, 
they  barely  hold  their  own.  Trades  unionism  may 
now  be  said  to  be,  as  an  efficient  movement,  about 
fifty  years  old  ;  co-operation  is  forty  years  old  j  most 
of  the  mutual-benefit  movements  are  in  their  second 
or  third  generation.  It  is  time  that  the  enthusiasts  of 
each  recognised  the  very  narrow  limit  of  their  real 
work.  They  practically  affect  the  fortunate  minority 
alone.  Ninety  per  cent  of  the  labour  population 
scarcely  feel  any  direct  benefit  from  them. 

Co-operation,  in  particular,  has  a  melancholy  failure 
to  acknowledge.  Too  much  has  been  made  of  the 
fact  that  a  small  fraction  of  the  labouring  classes 
(600,000  or  700,000  all  told)  have  learned  to  buy 
their  tea  and  sugar  in  economical  ways  at  stores  and 
clubs.  There  is  no  social  millennium  in  this.  Co- 
operation started  forty  years  ago  with  a  mission,  to 
revolutionise  industry,  to  abolish  the  wages  system, 
and  to  produce  by  associated  labour,  so  that  the 


388    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

labourer  should  share  in  the  profit  of  his  labour.  Over 
and  over  again  the  effort  has  been  made  to  start  true 
co-operative  production,  all  workers  sharing  the 
profits.  Over  and  over  again  it  has  failed.  It  has 
been  a  cruel  disappointment  to  the  noble-hearted  men 
who  forty  years  ago,  and  since,  have  hoped  that  they 
had  found  a  new  social  machine,  to  see  these  hopes 
ruined  by  the  indomitable  force  of  personal  interest 
and  the  old  Adam  of  industrial  selfishness. 

One  after  another  all  types  of  co-operative  pro- 
duction worthy  of  the  name  have  disappeared.  Here 
and  there  a  few  associated  artisans  or  artists  struggle 
on  in  a  small  business  where  capital  is  hardly  needed. 
In  1883  the  united  profits  of  all  productive  societies 
in  the  kingdom  were  less  than  ^15,000.  This  does 
not  count  the  flour-mills,  which  are  merely  a  form  of 
store  for  the  convenient  supply  of  food.  What  a  drop 
in  the  ocean  of  the  total  earnings  of  the  working 
classes,  ^500,000,000,  is  this  annual  profit  of  ^15,000  ! 
But  co-operative  employers  usually,  like  other  em- 
ployers, give  little  but  the  market  rate  of  wages,  and 
secure  the  best  dividends  they  can.  Why  should  they 
not  ?  they  ask  ;  for  they  are  poor  men,  trying  to  rise. 
Why  not  indeed  ?  Only  they  make  it  plain  that 
co-operation  is  simply  a  name  for  a  joint -stock 
company  ;  and  the  idea  that  it  is  about  to  reorganise 
modern  industry  is  now  an  exploded  day-dream.1 

Trades  unionism,  which  I  have  known  intimately 
for  twenty-five  years,  is  an  even  more  important  and 
efficient  engine  of  industrial  improvement,  mainly 
because  its  indirect  influence  is  at  least  as  great  as 
its  direct  influence.  A  trades  union  usually  benefits 
indirectly  quite  as  many  non-members  as  members, 

1  In  1883,  the  aggregate  dividend  paid  by  these  productive  societies 
in  England  was  under  £5000.  About  £100  was  devoted  to  educational 
and  charitable  purposes,  about  twice  as  much  to  labour,  apart  from  capital 
or  purchases.  In  1900  the  dividend  to  -workers  was  £20,545  (1908). 


SOCIAL  REMEDIES  389 

sometimes  perhaps  twice  as  many.  A  powerful  trades 
union  often  improves  the  condition  of  the  whole  trade. 
But,  at  the  utmost,  trades  unions  substantially  affect 
only  the  minority.  Of  the  twelve  millions  of  earners, 
certainly  not  one  million  are  in  union.  In  one  or 
two  of  the  most  skilled  trades,  the  unionists  are  the 
majority  ;  but,  taking  the  whole  labouring  population 
of  these  islands,  the  unionists  are  a  mere  fraction,  the 
aristocracy  of  labour.  Nor  is  this  fraction  now  rela- 
tively growing.  Trades  unionism,  in  the  sum,  is  not 
an  advancing  movement. 

In  two  generations  now  it  has  shown  itself  utterly 
powerless  to  reach  the  residuum,  or  even  materially  to 
combine  the  great  average  mass.  In  spite  of  all  the 
creditable  efforts  made  by  the  larger  unions,  and  by 
the  annual  congress  and  the  like,  unionism  in  its 
average,  and  certainly  in  its  lower,  types  tends  rather 
to  sectional  and  class  interests ;  it  divides  trade  from 
trade,  members  from  non-members  ;  and  especially  it 
accentuates  that  sinister  gulf  which  separates  the 
skilled  and  well-paid  artisan  from  the  unskilled 
labourer,  and  from  the  vast  destitute  residuum.  Our 
industrial  competition  forces  these  classes  into  per- 
manent antagonism.  Unionism  too  often  deepens 
this  antagonism  into  bitter  and  unsocial  war.1 

It  is  vain  indeed  to  expect  the  permanent  re- 
organisation of  industry  from  any  one  of  the  move- 
ments which  tend  to  the  more  general  distribution 
of  capital  or  land ;  nor  is  there  any  reasonable 
probability  that  this  will  come  about  naturally.  The 
steady  logic  of  facts  is  towards  the  concentration  of 
capital  and  not  its  distribution  ;  and  all  the  move- 
ments for  promoting  that  distribution  but  touch  the 
topmost  layers  ;  they  scarcely  affect  the  mass,  and  do 

1  The  New    Unionism  and  Socialism  have  now  much  changed  this 
(1908). 


390    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

nothing  for  the  lowest  state  of  destitution.  They 
leave  the  general  organisation  of  the  industrial  system 
exactly  as  they  find  it.  They  do  almost  nothing  to 
moralise  it,  to  infuse  into  it  a  new  spirit ;  and  they 
distinctly  decline  to  revolutionise  the  industrial  system 
itself.  Trades  unionism  indeed,  the  best  and  by  far 
the  most  powerful  of  these  agencies,  is  a  strongly 
conservative  movement,  and  depends  for  its  activity 
on  the  actual  industrial  system  as  it  is.  Compared 
with  the  gigantic  and  deep-seated  evils  of  our  present 
society,  these  various  schemes  for  the  general  dis- 
tribution of  capital  are  mere  palliatives,  stop-gaps,  and 
insignificant  experiments.  Nine-tenths  of  our  working 
people,  nine-tenths  of  their  wages,  are  hardly  affected 
by  them  at  all. 

I  turn  to  the  various  proposals  for  the  State 
management  of  capital  and  land,  that  is  to  say,  to 
the  nationalisation  of  the  soil,  and  Communism  pure 
and  simple.  There  is  nothing  particularly  new  about 
the  proposals  of  Mr.  Henry  George.  In  the  last 
century,  Thomas  Spence,  in  Newcastle,  proposed 
very  similar  theories,  and  the  Spencean  clubs  of  that 
period  were  quite  as  vigorous  as  the  land  nationalisa- 
tion societies  are  now.  Mr.  George  has,  however, 
given  the  discussion  a  new  interest  by  his  eloquence, 
passion,  and  his  experiences  of  the  new  societies  across 
the  Atlantic.  I  have  already  expressed  my  admiration 
of  Mr.  George's  genius  and  energy.  And  I  will  add 
this  :  his  dealing  with  the  land  question  has  drawn 
attention  to  some  important  truths,  so  valuable  that 
if  all  the  rest  of  his  arguments  were  worthless,  this 
would  still  make  him  one  of  the  most  vigorous  social 
thinkers  of  our  time. 

The  greater  part  of  his  criticism  of  our  present 
distribution  of  wealth  is  right  in  principle,  even  if 
exaggerated  in  statement.  He  has  abundantly  proved 


SOCIAL  REMEDIES  391 

that  it  is  not  due  to  any  special  conditions  of  English 
society,  law,  or  institutions.  He  has  thrown  fresh 
light  on  the  danger  of  permitting  to  the  owners  of 
the  soil  in  cities  the  absolute  disposal  of  its  surface 
and  the  buildings  on  it.  And  in  particular  he  has 
done  admirable  service  in  insisting  on  the  necessity 
for  a  genuine  land  tax.  I  am  prepared  myself  to  go 
with  him  so  far  as  to  see  a  fifth  at  least  of  our  national 
income  raised  by  a  tax  on  land  and  ground-rents,  as 
is  usual  in  most  other  civilised  communities.  But  all 
these  proposals  are  part  of  the  accepted  programme  of 
all  radical  reforms.  And  Mr.  George  has  done  nothing 
to  put  them  into  practical  and  workable  form. 

When,  however,  he  goes  on  to  represent  the 
appropriation  of  the  soil  in  private  hands  as  the  cause 
of  all  social  misery,  and  the  State  confiscation  of  the 
soil  as  the  panacea  for  every  ill  that  afflicts  society  or 
the  working  poor,  no  wilder  sophism  was  ever  uttered 
by  a  sane  man.  I  will  not,  in  a  serious  gathering  of 
cultivated  men,  waste  a  word  on  his  invocations  to  the 
will  of  God  or  the  rights  of  man.  Rant  of  this  kind 
is  more  fitting  to  a  negro  camp-meeting  than  to  an 
industrial  inquiry.  I  come  at  once  to  what  I  hold  to 
be  the  central  error  of  all  land  nationalisation  theories 
whatever.  It  is  assumed  in  all — 

(1)  That  property  in  land  is  something  different 
toto  ccelo  from  any  other  kind  of  property. 

(2)  That  property  in  land  represents  a  mere  legal 
right,  nothing  of  real  value  apart  from  its  arbitrary  and 
fictitious  value. 

(3)  That  property  in  land  retains  its  value  without 
any  act  or  expenditure  on  the  part  of  the  owner. 

(4)  That    there    is    some    mysterious    wickedness 
about   ownership    of  the   soil,    some    social    mischief 
which    is    not   at  all   shared   in   by   mere   permanent 
occupation  of  the  soil. 


392   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Every  one  of  these  assumptions  is  false.  The 
appropriation  of  the  soil  rests  on  precisely  the  same 
grounds  as  any  other  appropriation.  If  there  is  any- 
thing wicked  and  socially  mischievous  in  private 
property  in  land,  the  same  wickedness  and  mischief 
exist  in  any  other  private  property.  The  former  is 
the  appropriation  of  an  immovable  and  the  latter  of 
a  movable ;  but  there  the  distinction  ends.  There 
are  things  far  more  rare  than  the  soil,  and  quite 
as  essential  to  human  life.  The  appropriation  of 
all  the  salt  in  India,  or  of  all  the  coal  or  wood 
in  England,  would  create  a  monopoly  far  more 
formidable,  and  would  sooner  make  the  monopolist 
master  of  the  community  than  any  possible  appropria- 
tion of  the  soil.  Raffaelle's  pictures  and  ancient 
statues  are  far  more  rare  than  even  the  soil  of  these 
islands.  And  fuel,  ships,  or  iron  are  quite  as  necessary 
to  existence. 

If  property  becomes  sin,  when  extended  to  things 
of  which  the  supply  is  limited,  the  ownership  of 
diamonds,  coal,  antiquities,  and  ancient  manuscripts 
must  be  even  more  unholy.  To  lay  down  a  social 
law  that  no  one  shall  own  anything  which  is  much 
wanted  by  others,  would  apply  in  turn  to  almost  every 
subject  of  property.  Food,  building  materials,  horses, 
minerals,  even  books  and  newspapers,  become  in  certain 
societies  and  under  certain  conditions,  things  of  special 
desire,  and  suddenly  enrich  the  fortunate  owners.  The 
unearned  increment  applies  to  everything  in  turn. 
The  window  of  an  attic  which  commands  the  view  of 
some  historical  scene,  the  house  in  which  Shakespeare 
lived  and  died,  the  Times  newspaper  with  the  account 
of  the  battle  of  Waterloo,  suddenly  become  a  fortune 
in  the  hands  of  some  lucky  owner.  It  is  as  much  or 
as  little  criminal  to  own  them  as  to  own  a  bit  of  soil. 
If  rarity  and  a  general  desire  to  possess  them  make 


SOCIAL  REMEDIES  393 

things  incapable  of  appropriation,  the  rule  should  apply 
to  thousands  of  things  besides  land. 

Immense  nonsense  is  afloat  respecting  "  the  un- 
earned increment."  The  unearned  increment  is  the 
result  of  civilised  society  which  gives  special  value  to 
various  things,  quite  apart  from  any  act  of  their 
possessors.  In  a  besieged  city  the  fortunate  holders 
of  food,  in  a  war  the  possessors  of  ships,  saltpetre, 
guns,  and  the  like,  suddenly  find  that  their  property 
has  "an  unearned  increment."  The  buyers  of  the 
first  edition  of  the  Modern  Painters^  Turner's  Liber 
Studiorum^  or  Tennyson's  poems,  are  in  the  same  case. 
Those  who  have  bought  a  piece  of  land  in  a  spot 
where  a  town  begins  to  rise  are  in  precisely  the  same 
position.  It  may  be  quite  right  for  the  State  to 
prevent  the  possessors  of  the  soil  from  hindering  the 
free  development  of  the  town.  But  why  should  the 
State  confiscate  the  "  unearned  increment  "  of  the  piece 
of  ground,  and  not  the  "  unearned  increment "  of  the 
book,  the  grain,  or  the  saltpetre  ? 

Nor  is  it  true  that  land  is  a  positively  limited 
thing.  There  are  still  boundless  tracts  on  the  earth's 
surface  not  actually  occupied.  Land  is  in  no  sense 
so  limited  as  wood,  iron,  coal,  salt,  not  to  speak  of 
Greek  statues  and  illuminated  manuscripts.  And  in 
each  country,  even  in  ours,  the  quantity  of  cultivated 
and  useful  land  is  a  constantly  fluctuating  amount. 
The  land  in  practical  occupation  is  now  probably 
one-fifth  more  than  it  was  fifty  years  ago;  and 
perhaps  one-twentieth  less  than  it  was  ten  years  ago. 
The  land  of  any  country  in  actual  occupation  varies 
from  year  to  year  very  largely,  far  more  than  iron, 
coal,  wood,  or  old  books  and  pictures  vary  in  amount. 
At  this  hour,  there  are  millions  of  acres  of  the  soil 
of  these  islands  which  are  perfectly  at  the  service  of 
Mr.  George  and  his  friends,  at  a  rental  of  is.  an  acre, 


394  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

if  he  likes  to  lease  them,  and  to  convert  them  into 
good  farms.  It  is  untrue  that  the  soil  even  of  this 
island  is  all  allotted  out  and  closed  for  ever.  There 
are  millions  of  acres  still  to  be  had  which  might  be 
made  perfectly  serviceable  to  man  at  an  outlay  of  so 
much  per  acre.  What  is  lacking  is  the  capital  or  the 
labour  willing  to  convert  them.  For  practical  men 
well  know  that  to  convert  these  waste  lands  into  farms 
would  involve  a  ruinous  loss.  It  would  not  pay  one 
per  cent.  Why,  then,  should  the  "  State  "  be  required 
to  make  an  outlay  which  is  certain  to  prove  a  ruinous 
loss  ? 

This  brings  us  to  the  point  that  property  in  the 
soil  represents  not  a  bare  legal  right  to  exclude  others, 
but  the  actual  expenditure  of  capital  and  labour.  The 
underlying  fallacy  of  Mr.  George  is  to  think  that  land 
is  a  thing  like  the  sea,  and  raising  produce  from  it  is  a 
simple  process,  like  catching  fish.  There  are  excep- 
tional cases  and  extreme  limits.  But  an  ordinary  farm 
is  as  much  artificial  as  a  house  or  a  factory.  Good 
farm  land  in  England  is  the  work  of  enormous  outlay 
and  labour.  In  its  primitive  condition  it  was  moor,' 
swamp,  thicket,  or  sandy  wilderness.  Perhaps  not  a 
twentieth  part  of  this  island  in  its  original  state  (Mr. 
George  would  say  as  God  made  it)  was  of  any  use 
at  all  to  man.  There  is  hardly  an  acre  of  cultivated 
land  in  England  which  has  not  been  made  cultivable 
by  a  great  outlay  of  labour  and  capital.  It  has  really 
been  as  much  built  up  as  a  railway  or  a  dock. 
Immense  tracts  of  fine  farm  land  have  been  in  this 
very  century  slowly  won  from  a  state  of  barren 
wilderness  by  continuous  labour  and  the  enormous 
expenditure  of  capital.  The  whole  of  the  corn  lands 
recently  gained  from  the  open  down  and  moor, 
forming  large  parts  of  eight  or  ten  southern  and 
south-western  counties,  the  vast  and  fertile  regions 


SOCIAL  REMEDIES  395 

in  Lincolnshire,  Cambridgeshire,  and  other  North- 
Eastern  counties,  redeemed  from  salt-marsh,  fen,  and 
swamp,  have  been  made  quite  as  completely  by  human 
industry  as  a  ship  or  a  steam-engine. 

It  is  idle  to  repeat  sophistical  platitudes  that  God 
made  the  earth,  but  man  made  the  ship  or  the  engine. 
The  ship  and  the  engine  are  merely  materials  found 
on  and  in  the  earth,  worked  into  useful  forms,  and 
arranged  by  human  industry  to  serve  man's  wants. 
So  is  a  farm.  No  farm  in  England  is  in  the  state  in 
which  it  is  supposed  that  God  left  it  at  the  creation  of 
the  earth.  It  has  been  worked  up  and  rearranged  by 
human  labour  extending  over  centuries.  The  farm  is 
also,  like  the  ship  or  the  engine,  a  mass  of  the  earth's 
materials  so  changed  and  placed  that  it  can  grow  food. 
Apart  from  that  labour,  an  acre,  say,  in  the  Bedford 
Level,  or  on  the  Wiltshire  Downs,  would  be  as 
perfectly  worthless  as  an  acre  on  the  top  of  Snowdon 
or  on  the  Goodwin  Sands.  It  is  certainly  immovable, 
whilst  an  engine  or  a  ship,  under  conditions,  and  with 
great  expense  and  labour,  is  movable.  But  this  is  a 
mere  incident.  A  ship  stranded  is  also  immovable ; 
and  so  is  an  engine,  in  the  absence  of  capital  to 
move  it. 

Hence  we  find  that  large  portions  of  the  soil  of 
England  have  every  quality  possessed  by  other  purely 
personal  property,  which  Mr.  George  does  not  propose 
to  touch.  Even  he  would  be  scandalised  at  a  proposal 
to  confiscate  the  ships  and  engines  built  and  owned 
by  private  persons,  on  the  ground  that  their  material 
was  simply  a  portion  of  the  earth's  soil,  which  no  man 
has  a  right  to  appropriate.  Society  judges  it  wise  to 
guarantee  property  in  ships  and  engines  to  those  whose 
capital  has  procured  them  to  be  built,  in  order  to 
encourage  citizens  to  employ  their  savings  in  a  way 
useful  to  the  community.  On  precisely  the  same 


396    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

grounds  it  guarantees  property  in  the  Bedford  Level 
to  those  whose  capital  has  procured  it  to  be  made. 

The  Bedford  Level  is  no  doubt  an  extreme  case. 
But  it  is  only  a  matter  of  degree.  Hundreds  of 
thousands  of  acres  in  England  have  been  made  by 
human  toil,  skill,  and  capital,  quite  as  completely  as 
the  Bedford  Level  was  made  out  of  tidal  swamps.  To 
a  very  great  degree  every  cultivated  acre  in  England 
has  also  been  so  made.  Clearing  of  timber  and  brush- 
wood, of  stones,  weeds,  and  other  growths,  draining, 
fencing,  damming,  bridging,  making  roads,  barns, 
farmsteads  and  the  like,  ponds,  wells,  watercourses, 
and  the  hundreds  of  works  without  which  the  land 
could  not  bear  produce — these  costly  operations  were 
necessary  for  every  farm  alike.  If  the  people,  by  God's 
law,  have  a  right  to  God's  earth,  they  can  only  have  a 
right  to  that  earth  in  the  state  in  which  God  created  it. 

Let  us  assume  that  Mr.  George  is  right,  and  that 
we  agree  to  hand  back  the  soil  to  the  people.  It 
would  be  grossly  unjust  to  hand  it  back  to  them  in 
any  other  state  than  a  state  of  nature.  Assume  that 
we  could  replace  it  in  that  state,  in  the  state,  say,  in 
which  Julius  Caesar  saw  it  when  he  came  over  from 
Gaul.  This  island  then  consisted  of  pathless  tracts  of 
jungle,  fen,  moor,  wood,  and  heath.  The  valleys  of 
the  great  rivers  were  periodically  under  water  j  the 
estuaries  on  the  coast  were  boundless  salt  fens  ;  the 
uplands  were  sandy  or  stony  wildernesses  ;  there  were 
only  two  or  three  varieties  of  tree,  four  or  five  very 
common  herbs,  and  about  as  many  coarse  wild  fruits. 
It  would  be  impossible  for  any  but  hunters  and  coracle 
boatmen  to  get  about  the  country  ;  there  would  be 
hardly  any  food  for  man  or  cattle ;  neither  man  nor 
beast  could  live  anywhere  except  on  patches  here  and 
there,  mostly  in  aquatic  villages  or  on  detached  and 
stony  hills.  At  the  utmost,  one-twentieth  of  the  soil 


SOCIAL  REMEDIES  397 

could  be  used  for  human  produce,  and  that  only  in  the 
rudest  way  for  a  few  necessaries.  Nineteen-twentieths 
of  the  soil  would  be  as  absolutely  useless  for  human 
food  as  Dartmoor  and  the  Wash  are  now.  That 
is  the  condition  in  which  God  gave  the  soil  of 
England  to  the  people  of  England  ;  and  that  is  the 
condition  in  which  they  should,  by  God's  law,  receive 
it  back. 

To  seize  it,  after  centuries  and  centuries  of  labour 
have  been,  by  man's  law,  expended  in  utterly  changing 
its  very  face  and  nature,  would  be  monstrously  unjust. 
We  have  lately  by  legislation  remedied  what  most  of 
us  hold  to  be  a  cruel  injustice  to  Ireland,  where  the 
labour  which  A  had  put  into  the  soil  was  confiscated 
by  B.  In  Ireland,  the  mountain-side  and  the  bog 
had  often  been  won  into  cultivation  and  usefulness  by 
the  incessant  labour  of  some  tenant,  or  perhaps  squatter 
or  bare  occupant.  Mr.  George  has  justly  inveighed 
against  the  outrageous  injustice  done,  when  the  farm 
so  reclaimed  by  the  labour  and  capital  of  the  peasant 
was  claimed,  plus  its  improvements,  by  the  mere 
owner  of  the  soil.  We  heartily  agree  with  him.  On 
what  ground  ?  Because  we  find  it  unjust  that  the 
men  who  may  fairly  claim  the  soil  should  plunder, 
along  with  the  soil,  the  visible  result  of  another's 
labour  and  capital.  In  England  it  is  not  the  occupant 
but  the  owner,  or  those  whom  the  owner  represents, 
who  have  expended  on  the  soil  that  labour  which  alone 
has  made  it  useful  to  man.  Mr.  George,  therefore,  is 
going  to  do  in  England  exactly  what  he  and  we  find 
so  monstrous  in  Ireland.  Granted  that  the  soil  of 
England  belongs  to  the  people  of  England.  Then  he 
is  calling  on  the  people  of  England  not  only  to  seize 
the  soil,  but  to  confiscate  the  enormous  wealth  repre- 
senting the  outlay  by  which  the  soil  has  been  trans- 
formed. He  is  going  on  a  colossal  scale  to  repeat  the 


398    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

injustice  which  in  a  very  minor  form  we  have  just 
redressed  by  legislation. 

Some,  schools  of  land  nationalisation  propose  what 
they  call  compensation  on  this  confiscation.  What 
they  propose  is,  however,  no  compensation  at  all.  It 
is  not,  and  never  can  be,  any  kind  of  equivalent  for 
the  capital  expended.  The  strict  prairie  value  of 
agricultural  land  in  England  would  hardly  amount  to 
one  year's  rent.  The  improved  value,  representing 
capital  expended  in  making  the  prairie  cultivable, 
would  usually  exceed  twenty  years'  rent.  It  may  be 
doubted  if  ^2,000,000,000  would  go  any  way  in  mak- 
ing the  soil  of  England  what  it  is  to-day,  supposing 
that  it  were  in  the  state  in  which  Julius  Caesar,  or 
even  William  the  Conqueror,  found  it.  The  idea 
that  the  owners  of  the  soil  simply  represent  a  parch- 
ment-right granted  ages  ago  by  some  sovereign  or 
paramount  authority  is  almost  too  ridiculous  to 
discuss. 

There  is  perhaps  not  a  single  enclosed  and  cul- 
tivated acre  in  England  on  which  human  labour  has 
not  been  expended  and  paid  for  far  in  excess  of 
many  years'  rent ;  it  would  be  easy  to  show  that  in 
some  spots  forty,  fifty,  even  a  hundred  years'  rental 
would  not  cover  the  loss  and  outlay  sunk  in  making  it 
fertile.  We  ought  to  calculate,  not  merely  the  bare 
clearing,  draining,  and  enclosing  the  particular  farm, 
but  the  whole  of  the  permanent  works  needed  to 
make  any  given  district  cultivable  as  it  now  is — the 
vast  and  ancient  operations  of  dyking  rivers,  estuaries, 
and  watercourses,  the  road-making,  bridge-making,  and 
planting,  the  sum  of  those  labours  which  make  an 
English  county  so  utterly  unlike  the  same  soil  in  the 
days  of  the  Heptarchy.1  It  is  as  great  a  difference  as 

1  The  works  here  spoken  of  are  all  the  beneficial   constructions  for 
the  permanent  improvement  of  the  soil,  made  at  the  cost  of  successive 


SOCIAL  REMEDIES  399 

that  between  a  frock-coat  and  a  sheep's  fleece.  Mr. 
George  might  as  well  claim  the  coats  off  our  backs, 
on  the  ground  that  God  made  the  sheep,  as  the  farms 
which  have  been  made  by  human  capital  and  skill. 

It  is  idle  to  seek  now  to  unravel  all  the  titles  to 
every  plot  in  England.  The  notion  that  the  soil  of 
England  is  held  to-day  under  grants  made  by  Norman 
and  Tudor  kings  is  obviously  childish.  It  would  be 
easy  to  show  that  an  immense  proportion  of  it  is  now 
held  by  the  assigns  of  those  who  paid  hard  money  or 
money's  worth  for  it.  Somebody  gave  or  paid  for  the 
labour  ;  and  it  would  be  as  idle  to  trace  back  the  heirs 
of  the  original  labourers  as  it  would  be  to  find  the 
men  who  made  our  coats,  or  the  heirs  of  the  brick- 
layers who  laid  the  walls  of  our  houses.  In  civilised 
society  the  legal  ownership  of  an  article  is  assumed  to 
represent  the  value  given  for  the  labour  expended  on 
it.  If  every  man  were  liable  to  have  his  coat  con- 
fiscated off  his  back,  unless  he  could  show  that  he  had 
paid  his  tailor,  that  the  tailor  had  paid  the  clothier, 
that  the  clothier  had  paid  the  farmer,  that  the  farmer 
had  paid  the  shepherd,  and  so  on  ad  infinitum,  civilised 
society  would  cease  to  exist.  There  is  no  more 
reason  in  land  than  in  anything  else  for  calling  on  the 
legal  owner  to  show  that  he  has  personally  paid  the 
value  expended  in  making  the  article,  be  the  article 
coat  or  farm.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  a  very  large  part 
of  the  soil  of  England  has  been  acquired  for  value 
given  within  recent  generations. 

Even  the  estates  of  our  peers,  whose  Norman 
names  excite  Mr.  George's  democratic  sensibilities, 
have  usually  been  acquired,  directly  or  indirectly, 

owners  of  the  land.  They  do  not  include  high-roads,  bridges,  or  othef 
works  paid  for  by  the  parish,  the  county,  or  any  public  body.  Every  one 
knows  that  in  every  large  property  there  are  occupation  roads,  bridges, 
dykes,  and  other  works  necessarily  paid  for  by  the  proprietor. 


400   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL   PROBLEMS 

through  purchases  by  capitalists  or  marriage  with  the 
children  of  capitalists.  It  was  amusing  to  read  Mr. 
George's  denunciations  of  the  London  estate  of  the 
Duke  of  Westminster,  which  he  told  us  was  a  grant 
from  a  Norman  king.  Everybody  knows  that  it 
comes  by  inheritance  from  a  worthy  yeoman,  who 
farmed  his  own  estate,  and  left  it  in  due  course  to  his 
grandchild.  The  grandchild's  descendant  about  a 
hundred  years  ago  obtained  a  title.  But  the  right  of 
the  Duke  to  the  soil  is  precisely  the  same  as  Mr. 
George's  right  to  anything  which  was  left  to  him  by 
his  grandfather.  There  are  no  Norman  kings  in 
America,  and  no  land-laws  made  by  an  aristocracy. 
And  yet  precisely  the  same  evils  of  land  monopoly 
exist  there,  we  are  told,  and  the  same  policy  of  con- 
fiscation is  recommended. 

Who  are  the  people  of  England  to  whom  God  gave 
the  soil  ?  Are  they  the  descendants  of  the  aborigines, 
of  the  first  occupants,  of  the  Britons,  Saxons,  or  the 
mediaeval  yeomen  ?  Have  not  the  Welsh,  the  men 
of  Cornwall,  the  Highlands,  and  the  West  of  Ireland 
the  best  title  to  the  soil  of  their  ancestors?  And  in 
America  God  certainly  gave  the  soil  to  the  red-skin  ; 
and  by  the  law  of  divine  justice  one  would  think  that 
New  York,  Boston,  and  Chicago  should  be  restored 
to  the  remnant  still  left  in  the  Indian  reserves.  Absurd 
panaceas  can  only  be  properly  exposed  by  pointing 
out  the  absurd  consequences  which  logically  they 
involve. 

Not  only  does  the  owner  of  a  farm  represent  those 
who  have  expended  capital  in  creating  it,  but  the 
farm  would  soon  cease  to  exist  if  the  owner  did  not 
continue  to  expend  capital  in  keeping  it  going. 
Next  to  the  fallacy  that  the  landlord  has  done  nothing 
to  make  the  land,  comes  the  fallacy  that  he  does 
nothing  to  maintain  it.  An  ordinary  estate  requires 


SOCIAL  REMEDIES  401 

periodical  expenditure,  amounting  at  the  lowest  to  ten 
per  cent  of  the  rental,  often  twice,  thrice,  or  four 
times  as  much.  Official  reports  from  one  of  the 
great  estates  in  the  kingdom  show  that  in  sixteen 
years  nearly  three-quarters  of  a  million  sterling  has 
been  expended.  Of  late  years  much  of  this  outlay 
has  been  incurred  along  with  a  reduction  of  rents. 
It  may  well  be  that  much  of  this  expenditure  is  in 
permanent  improvements  which  will  ultimately  repre- 
sent increased  value.  But  in  England  an  immense 
proportion  of  this  expenditure  has  nothing  to  do  with 
profit  or  speculation.  It  is  voluntarily  made  by  the 
duty  or  pride  of  ownership,  just  as  parks  and  gardens 
are  kept  up  without  any  view  to  profit. 

Farmhouses,  farm  buildings,  cottages,  schools, 
churches,  clearings,  plantations,  and  model  farms  are 
placed  on  the  soil  by  rich  landlords  out  of  their 
capital.  The  country  gains  largely  by  this  ;  and  the 
reason  that  so  many  parts  of  England  are  cultivated 
like  gardens  or  home  farms  is  that  the  owners,  having 
immense  capital  from  resources  other  than  agricultural 
rents,  are  able  to  indulge  their  pride  or  their  sense 
of  duty  by  expending  enormous  sums  in  improving 
and  beautifying  their  estates.  One  landlord  in  16 
years  spent  in  farms,  cottages,  etc.,  ^290,000. 
Another,  in  3  years,  ^60,000.  Another,  in  17  years, 
^30,000  (rental  reduced).  Another  has,  in  10  years, 
received  ^50,000,  out  of  which  he  spent  on  the  land 
^43,000  without  increased  rental.  These  improve- 
ments are  all  in  country  estates,  and  in  different 
counties.1  Instead  of  the  great  peers  carrying  off  the 

1  These  cases  have  been  given  to  me  privately,  and  in  each  case  with 
exact  figures  supplied  from  the  agent's  office.  They  belong  to  a  large 
class  of  English  properties  which  are  owned  by  men  of  great  wealth  and 
managed  on  liberal  principles,  without  any  idea  of  exacting  the  maximum 
rental.  They  are  not  at  all  the  strongest  cases  to  be  found.  The 
entire  rental  of  some  large  estates  is  expended  on  the  property.  I  know 

2  D 


402    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

rentals  of  their  farms  to  be  consumed  in  extravagance, 
the  farms  are  often  kept  in  their  present  high  condition 
because  vast  sums  acquired  elsewhere  are  poured  into 
them.  I  am  certainly  not  prepared  to  utter  one  word 
in  defence  either  of  our  landed  system  or  of  our  con- 
centration of  land  in  a  few  hands,  least  of  all  in 
defence  of  the  unsocial  extravagance  of  the  rich.  But 
on  the  whole  I  believe  that  great  landlords  in  England 
administer  their  estates  with  more  sense  of  public 
duty  than  bankers  or  merchants  employ  their  capital. 

On  the  whole  I  estimate  that  an  annual  sum  of  at 
least  ten  millions  is  needed  to  keep  our  agricultural 
land  at  a  high  level  of  condition,  in  building,  draining, 
fencing,  clearing,  planting,  in  roads,  dykes,  water-, 
courses,  bridges,  and  so  forth.  In  a  country  changing 
so  rapidly  as  ours,  and  with  daily  advances  in  scientific 
farming,  this  outlay  is  required  to  keep  abreast  of  the 
general  progress.  Were  this  not  expended  the  fertility 
of  the  land  would  rapidly  deteriorate  and  ultimately 
cease  altogether.  Any  large  tract  of  ordinary  country 
left  to  itself  for  a  generation  would  return  to  a  state 
of  nature,  and  in  two  or  three  generations  it  would  be 
as  uncultivable  and  as  uninhabitable  as  the  moor  or 
the  fen  of  our  ancestors.  An  ordinary  estate  requires 
a  continual  expenditure  of  capital  to  keep  it  going, 
just  as  a  ship,  or  a  railway,  or  a  cotton-mill. 

The  sole  justification  of  ownership  of  the  soil  is 
that  this  is  done  by  the  owner.  In  England  it  is  done 
by  the  owner,  and,  on  the  whole,  done  well.  It  is 

myself  of  two  properties  owned  by  millionaires,  one  of  £13,000,  the 
other  £4000  a  year,  from  which  for  years  past  no  income  has  been 
taken  off"  the  land.  I  cite  these  cases  not  to  claim  any  merit  for  the 
owners,  nor  as  a  defence  of  the  landlord  system,  but  to  prove  a  plain 
economic  fact,  viz.,  that  a  large  proportion  of  the  estates  in  England 
are  managed  without  any  reference  to  pecuniary  profit,  and  that  immense 
sums  are,  as  a  fact,  annually  spent  in  improving  the  land  by  the  owners. 
The  question  whence  that  money  comes  is  a  perfectly  distinct  issue. 


SOCIAL  REMEDIES  403 

well  done  mainly  because  the  soil  of  England  is  owned 
by  men,  very  many  of  whom  are  rich  apart  from  their 
rentals  from  farms.  If  an  annual  outlay  of  ten 
millions  be  taken  (for  illustration)  as  the  amount 
required  to  keep  our  agricultural  land  in  a  high  state 
of  productiveness,  I  shall  assume  that  no  less  than 
fifteen  millions  is  annually  expended  on  it  now,  if 
we  include  every  kind  of  outlay — churches,  schools, 
cottages,  model  farms,  houses,  gardens,  plantations,  of 
every  kind  :  in  fact,  all  that  is  not  accomplished  by 
public  taxation. 

Where  is  this  ten  or  fifteen  millions  annually  to 
come  from  if  the  State  confiscates  the  soil  ?  To 
throw  it  on  the  occupant  or  farmer  is  to  overburden 
him,  already  unable  as  he  is  to  stock  or  work  his  farm 
from  want  of  capital.  He  will  have,  as  now,  to  pay 
his  rent  or  land  tax  to  the  State.  Otherwise  the  State 
will  derive  no  benefit  from  confiscation,  and  will  simply 
make  a  present  of  the  land  to  the  farmers.  But  if  the 
farmer,  besides  paying  his  rent,  is  to  find  the  annual 
outlay  for  repairs  and  improvements,  none  but  capitalists, 
or  the  nominees  of  capitalists,  will  be  able  to  farm. 
Hence,  the  ten  or  fifteen  millions  must  come  either 
from  the  State  or  from  land  banks.  If  from  the 
State,  then  a  large  slice  of  the  State's  new  land  tax 
will  be  cut  ofF.  And  what  a  prospect  of  State  inter- 
vention, jobbery,  and  mismanagement  is  unfolded  by 
a  scheme  which  puts  every  farm  under  the  direct 
management  of  the  State  ;  which  substitutes  for  all 
the  land  agents  and  landlords  in  England  a  huge 
department  at  Whitehall  which  would  have  to  give 
an  order  before  any  gate,  barn,  or  ditch  in  the 
kingdom  could  be  repaired. 

It  has  been  suggested  that  the  difficulty  is  met  by 
leasing  the  State  land  at  a  lower  rate.  This  does  not 
meet  the  case.  In  the  first  place,  the  State  will  have 


404  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

to  see  that  the  sums  required  for  improvements  are 
actually  expended.  That  would  involve  minute  and 
constant  inspection,  followed  by  eviction  in  case  of 
default.  What  an  endless  source  of  discontent  such 
a  system  involves  !  Again,  a  large  part  of  the  ex- 
penditure now  made  by  great  landlords  is  far  in  excess 
of  what  a  public  department  could  or  would  exact 
from  farmers  with  small  capital.  Yet  if  that  expendi- 
ture is  sacrificed  the  country,  at  any  rate  the  land, 
would  be  the  loser.  Lastly,  a  large,  irregular,  and 
occasional  expenditure,  which  is  easily  borne  by  a 
great  capitalist,  is  not  so  readily  met  by  a  farmer 
without  capital.  A  farmer,  now  paying  £2.00  a  year 
rental,  needs,  we  may  suppose,  a  new  house,  buildings, 
and  appurtenances,  to  cost  ^2000.  A  landlord  easily 
finds  that  sum.  It  is  a  very  different  thing  to  call 
on  the  farmer  to  find  it,  even  if  his  rent  be  reduced 
from  £200  to  jCioo  per  annum.  The  seamen  who 
navigate  an  ocean  steamer  could  not  find  the  capital 
to  work  it,  even  if  their  wages  were  ^500  a  year. 

Suppose,  on  the  other  hand,  that  the  State  declines 
so  gigantic  and  so  unpopular  a  task,  and  that  the  ten 
or  fifteen  millions  is  found  by  financial  corporations 
— land  banks  of  some  kind.  That  is  to  institute  a 
vast  system  of  mortgage  over  the  face  of  our  country. 
Mortgages  are  bad  enough  when  created  by  a  land- 
lord ;  they  are  far  more  ruinous  when  the  farmer  or 
peasant  is  indebted.  The  State  would  be  the  mere 
overlord,  receiving  the  true  rent  under  the  name  of 
land-tax,  as  in  India  or  Egypt ;  and  the  cultivator — 
call  him  peasant,  farmer,  or  lessee  —  would  be  the 
bond-slave  of  some  money-dealer,  who  would  be  his 
mortgagee  and  practical  master.  The  place  of  land- 
lord would  be  taken  by  some  banking  company  in 
London. 

This  is  what  happens  always  where  the  cultivator 


SOCIAL  REMEDIES  405 

is  without  capital,  and  yet  where  he  has  himself  to 
find  the  sums  periodically  needed  to  keep  his  land  in 
condition.  This  is  why  the  Egyptian  fellah,  the 
Indian  ryot,  the  peasant  in  Russia  and  Eastern 
Europe  generally,  is  the  bond-slave  of  the  money- 
lender. Even  in  France,  Belgium,  or  America, 
where  the  peasant  has  unusual  qualities  of  industry 
and  thrift,  the  poorer  class  of  farr/ers  are  bowed  down 
by  mortgages  and  loans.  How  could  it  be  otherwise  ? 
No  magic  will  get  rid  of  the  need  for  constant  outlay 
to  keep  the  land  in  condition  ;  nor  will  any  magic 
supply  the  small  farmer — call  him  what  you  will — 
with  the  capital  needed.  At  present  he  can  hardly 
buy  his  stock  and  implements.  How  is  he  to  find, 
then,  ten  or  fifteen  millions  more,  if  we  abolish  the 
landowner,  who  now  finds  this  sum  ?  He  can  only 
find  it  by  borrowing ;  and  the  lender  will  be  more  or 
less  master  of  him  and  of  his  land. 

Suppose  that,  by  a  short  Act  of  Parliament,  the 
payment  of  rent  were  abolished,  within  a  generation 
the  present  farmers,  who,  as  a  rule,  have  neither  large 
capital  nor  the  habit  of  accumulating  a  large  capital, 
would  be  deeply  in  debt  for  the  sums  required  to  renew 
buildings  and  develop  cultivation.  Where  there  is 
need  for  continual  outlay  of  capital,  borrowing  is  the 
only  means  by  which  a  class  without  capital  can  meet 
that  outlay,  however  easy  be  the  terms  on  which  the 
holders  may  get  the  land.  The  land  question  is  a 
question  of  capital.  No  legislation  can  create  capital 
where  it  does  not  exist,  and  where  the  habit  of 
accumulating  does  not  exist.  But  the  nationalisation 
scheme  does  not  pretend  to  abolish  rent.  It  only 
converts  rent  into  land-tax  ;  that  is,  it  changes  the 
persons  to  whom  rent  is  payable.  The  landowner 
system  is  a  device  for  getting  capital  on  to  the  land. 
If  we  abolish  the  landowner,  then,  as  the  farmer  has 


406  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

not  adequate  capital,  it  must  come  either  from  the 
State  or  from  lenders. 

The  English  schools  of  land  nationalisation  usually 
proclaim  as  their  aim  the  formation  of  a  number  of 
small  farms  leased  from  the  State,  with  fixity  of  tenure 
—  in  fact,  the  legislative  creation  of  a  system  of 
permanent  peasant  occupation.  There  are  great  social 
advantages  in  peasant  proprietorship,  and  in  any 
system  where  the  actual  cultivator  is  in  free  possession 
of  the  soil  he  tills.  I  am  wholly  convinced  that  to 
occupying  ownership,  without  legal  limitation  on  the 
extent  of  the  holding,  we  must  ultimately  come.  But 
the  questions  before  us  are  these  :  First,  can  we  create 
such  a  system  at  a  stroke  by  legislative  compulsion  ? 
Secondly,  in  order  to  do  so,  need  we  start  with  such 
a  tremendous  revolution  as  abolishing  property  in 
land  ?  Thirdly,  when  we  had  done  it,  would  the 
advantages  (apart  from  the  dangers  and  evils)  be  at  all 
commensurate  ?  To  these  three  questions  I  answer, 
No! 

If  every  rural  labourer  in  England  were  suddenly 
by  law  declared  the  absolute  owner  of  ten  acres,  other 
conditions  remaining  unchanged,  within  a  few  years 
the  productiveness  of  the  soil  would  be  reduced  by 
one-half,  and  in  a  few  generations  large  properties 
would  be  again  the  rule,  and  the  bulk  of  the  labourers 
would  be  in  a  state  of  dependence.  It  is  impossible, 
in  a  country  like  ours,  to  force  society  back  into  the 
primitive  simplicity  of  Switzerland  and  Norway,  even 
if  it  were  desirable.  It  is  useless  to  make  peasant 
proprietors  or  independent  farmers  by  law,  until  both 
have  the  habits  and  the  capital  needed  to  work  such 
farms  or  holdings  to  a  profit.  Then,  when  we  had 
"  planted  our  people  on  the  land,"  we  should  at  most 
have  provided  for  one  million  of  earners  out  of  our 
twelve  millions  of  earners,  for  if  the  holdings  were  too 


SOCIAL  REMEDIES  407 

small,  production  would  be  arrested.  How  should  we 
have  improved  the  condition  of  the  other  eleven  millions 
of  earners  ?  To  hope  that  we  should  have  abolished 
wages,  even  in  agriculture,  is  an  illusion.  There  is 
not  a  country  in  the  world  where  the  wage-receivers 
do  not  exceed  the  proprietors  tilling  their  own  land. 
And  in  a  system  of  peasant  ownership  the  wage- 
receivers  are  often  worse  off  than  elsewhere. 

If  our  soil  is  to  be  well  cultivated,  the  lots — call 
them  farms,  properties,  or  holdings — could  not,  at  the 
outside,  exceed  a  million,  and  would  probably  be 
quite  small  enough  if  they  amounted  to  half  or  a 
quarter  of  a  million.  If  these  lots  are  to  be  well  tilled, 
some  one  must  have  full  control  over  each,  call  him 
peasant,  farmer,  owner,  lessee,  or  occupant.  Unless 
such  occupant  has  permanent  tenure,  with  full  power 
to  transmit  to  his  assigns  and  successors,  he  will  not 
put  capital  into  the  land.  Unless  he  has  capital  of 
his  own  he  must  borrow  it.  When  he  is  a  systematic 
borrower  he  will  cease  to  be  a  free  proprietor.  And 
when  financial  rings  hold  under  mortgages  the  soil  of 
England,  we  shall  simply  have  established  for  the 
landlords  whom  we  see,  and  who  (in  England)  live  on 
their  estates  and  usually  take  some  pride  in  them, 
invisible  money-dealers  living  in  distant  cities.  What 
is  there  in  all  this  to  transform  industry,  reorganise 
our  social  system,  and  offer  a  millennium  to  the 
thirty-five  millions  of  these  islands  ? 

Our  English  schools  of  land  nationalisation  adopt 
the  principle  merely  in  name.  Mr.  George  proposes 
a  genuine  Communism,  so  far  as  land  is  concerned. 
If  his  scheme  is  to  have  the  grand  social  results  which 
he  claims,  he  must  abolish  all  property  in  the  soil  as  an 
institution.  It  is,  according  to  him,  from  the  sinful 
institution  whereby  plots  of  God's  earth  are  nefariously 
allotted  to  private  persons  in  full  control  that  poverty, 


4o8   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

bad  trade,  rotten  finance,  injustice,  fraud,  and  even 
prostitution,  spring.  But  the  practical  result  of  our 
English  land  nationalisation  movement  is,  not  to 
abolish,  but  greatly  to  strengthen  this  malignant 
institution,  the  appropriation  of  the  soil.  The 
English  schools  seek  to  make  many  more  persons  the 
virtual  masters  of  the  soil.  Nationalisation,  in  their 
mouths,  is  reduced  to  a  phrase.  The  State  is  to  be 
declared  sole  proprietor.  Well,  that  is  nothing  ;  such 
is  now  the  law  of  the  land,  a  law  acted  on  daily,  when 
land  is  taken  under  the  compulsory  powers  of  a 
thousand  Acts  of  Parliament.  But  names  apart, 
the  new  allottees  of  the  farms  or  plots  will  be 
quite  as  much  proprietors,  in  the  anti-social  sense 
of  the  term,  as  the  Norman  barons  who  now  own 
them. 

Unless  the  allottees  have  permanent  occupation, 
with  fixity  of  tenure,  and  freedom  to  transfer,  charge, 
and  devise  them,  the  land  cannot  be  properly  worked. 
Some  persons  or  other,  by  a  law  of  nature,  physical 
nature  and  human  nature  alike,  must  have  full  control 
over  the  soil,  unless  it  is  to  waste  and  go  to  ruin 
as  land  does  in  Turkey  or  Persia.  But  permanent 
occupation,  with  fixity  of  tenure  and  freedom  of 
assignment,  is  proprietorship  in  other  words.  It  will 
exercise  over  society  all  the  same  effects.  The  new 
allottees  will  accumulate  estates,  and  in  a  few  genera- 
tions will  be  just  as  selfish,  tyrannical,  and  indolent  as 
the  Norman  barons.  They  will  be  just  as  much  the 
enemies  of  the  human  race.  Why  not  ?  We  shall 
have  changed  the  persons  of  the  proprietors  ;  but  how 
shall  we  have  changed  the  proprietor  nature  ?  Instead 
of  Lord  Wolverton,  a  London  banker,  or  Lord 
Ardilaun,  a  Dublin  brewer,  who  care  little  for  the 
rentals  of  farms,  we  should  have  got  a  dozen  small 
capitalists  who  had  saved  money  in  iron,  and  a  dozen 


SOCIAL  REMEDIES  409 

more  who  had  prospered  in  coal,  butter,  or  mutton, 
and  who  are  not  likely  to  be  easier  landlords.1 

In  what  I  have  said  I  do  not  by  one  word  accept 
the  actual  land  system  as  satisfactory,  or  our  present 
social  condition  as  tolerable.  I  am  as  eager  as  any 
Socialist  to  transform  our  landlordism  as  a  permanent 
institution  and  to  find  a  higher  standard  for  our  general 
industrial  life.  I  see  certain  great  advantages,  chiefly 
economical  and  material,  in  our  present  system  of 
landed  estates  ;  but  I  am  very  far  from  believing  that 
these  counterbalance  its  grave  social  evils.  But  these 
are  to  be  dealt  with,  I  hold,  by  the  class  of  measures 
long  advocated  by  all  schools  of  radical  land  reformers. 
I  am  as  anxious  as  any  man  to  see  a  large  body  of 
peasant  holdings  freely  springing  up  on  our  land.  I 
look  for  a  large  body  of  working  farmers,  with  per- 
manent interest  and  complete  freedom  in  their  own 
farms.  And  I  see  social  and  moral  evils  of  the  worst 
kind  in  any  system  which  practically  severs  (as  ours 
does)  the  ownership  of  the  soil  from  any  responsibility 
to  superintend  its  cultivation.  That  is  to  say,  there 
are  grave  evils  to  society  where  estates  in  the  mass 
are  simply  leased  or  loaned  for  hire  like  money.  These 
evils,  however,  can  be  remedied  by  a  reform  of  the 
land  laws,  by  abolishing  all  the  legal  and  social  privi- 
leges peculiar  to  the  ownership  of  land,  and  by  a 
resolute  scheme  of  land  taxation. 

Under  such  a  system  of  reform  it  would  simply 
not  pay  to  be  the  nominal  owner  of  a  great  estate. 

1  In  Professor  Newman's  paper,  "  written  on  behalf  of  the  Land 
Nationalisation  Society,"  he  says  :  "  The  aim  of  our  society  is  to  establish 
a  state  of  things  in  which  small  independent  plots  of  land  shall  be 
procurable  everywhere."  As  the  aim  to  be  reached,  he  speaks  of  farms 
"  being  multiplied  through  peasant  freeholds."  Now  to  maintain  such  a 
system  in  England,  even  if  it  could  be  created  by  law,  two  things  are 
absolutely  necessary — (i)  limitation  by  law  of  the  size  of  holdings,  (2) 
prohibition  against  sub-letting.  Both  of  these  conditions  are  impossible. 
To  attempt  them  would  lead  to  an  unendurable  tyranny. 


4io  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

A  great  estate  would  become  a  mere  burden,  and  not 
a  very  honourable  one,  except  where  a  man  of  vast 
wealth  might  choose  to  devote  a  large  part  of  it  to 
the  public  service,  by  keeping  up  an  estate  without 
profit.  However,  after  all  the  changes,  I  am  not  sure 
that  the  tillers  of  the  soil  will  be,  in  material  conditions, 
quite  as  well  off  as  many  are  now  who  hold  under  the 
great  Bedford,  Devonshire,  Portland,  Buccleuch,  and 
Northumberland  estates.  But,  on  the  whole,  the 
social  objections  to  the  maintenance  of  an  indebted, 
idle,  and  exclusive  squirearchy  are  so  serious,  that  we 
should  by  every  legal  obstacle  limit  the  formation 
of  a  landlord  class  whose  social  function  is  sport, 
and  whose  economic  function  is  to  spend  what 
rent  remains  after  keeping  the  estate  in  productive 
efficiency.  Economically  speaking,  there  is  some 
social  justification  for  dukes  and  millionaires  as  land- 
lords, for  they  sometimes  put  almost  as  much  on  to 
the  land  as  they  draw  off,  and  they  offer  types  of  high 
agricultural  efficiency.  It  is  the  squireen,  with  one 
or  two  thousand  acres,  with  no  capital,  no  occupation, 
and  few  useful  faculties,  who  is  without  any  raison 
d'etre  ;  being,  like  his  own  cherished  fox,  a  survival  of 
the  unfittest  in  modern  civilisation. 

In  what  I  have  said  I  strictly  limit  myself  to 
England,  and  to  rural  estates.  If  the  system  cannot 
be  applied  to  English  farms  it  fails  altogether.  The 
social  and  economical  conditions  of  the  greater  part  of 
Ireland,  and  even  of  Scotland,  are  so  very  different ; 
the  social  justification  of  the  landlord  there  is  so  much 
less  even  when  it  exists  at  all,  that  very  different 
reasoning  applies  to  the  ill-managed  territories  of  so 
many  Irish  and  Scotch  absentee  landlords.  I  also 
have  been  speaking  exclusively  of  the  soil  in  country, 
not  in  cities.  I  am  quite  prepared  to  see  the  State, 
through  local  authorities,  assert  in  towns  a  permanent 


SOCIAL  REMEDIES  411 

right  to  control  the  disposition  of  the  soil  in  such 
ways  as  experience  shall  prove  to  be  most  useful  to 
the  public.  Abstract  rights  of  property  should  no 
more  be  an  obstacle  to  laying  out  our  cities  as  health 
and  convenience  suggest,  than  they  are  now  in 
making  a  railway  through  an  estate.  What  we  want 
are  a  set  of  Lands  Clauses  Acts  applying  to  any  soil 
in  towns,  and  vesting  control  over  it  in  proper  local 
authorities.  And  we  shall  want  very  stringent  pro- 
visions to  check  owners  from  doing  anything  contrary 
to  public  interests,  or  from  receiving  fanciful  com- 
pensation for  their  own  laches  and  obstruction. 

Even  then  we  ought  to  see  more  wisdom  and 
honesty  in  local  authorities  before  we  can  confidently 
entrust  to  them  the  work  now  done  for  the  most  part 
by  great  landowners.  The  municipalities  of  Paris, 
New  York,  San  Francisco,  or  Melbourne  are  not 
model  trustees  of  public  interests  j  some  think  that 
even  the  Corporation  of  London  and  the  Metropolitan 
Board  of  Works  are  far  from  all  that  is  wanted.  Is  it 
quite  certain  that  either  of  them  would  abolish  misery 
and  unhealthy  dwellings  the  moment  we  had  handed 
over  to  them  the  control  of  the  Bedford,  Salisbury, 
Portland,  Portman,  Grosvenor,  and  Cadogan  estates  ? 
We  may  take  it  at  least  as  certain  that  in  the  manage- 
ment of  these  neither  fraud  nor  oppression  is  directly 
charged  against  the  noble  owners,  other  than  such 
fraud  and  oppression  as  Mr.  George  finds  in  the  act  of 
owning  land  at  all.  To  a  citizen  of  Paris,  New 
York,  or  San  Francisco,  accustomed  to  associate 
municipal  government  with  bribery,  rings,  corners, 
and  public  plunder,  such  a  state  of  things  would 
appear  an  impossible  Utopia.  Every  one  who  knows 
London  can  see  how  unfounded  and  even  ludicrous 
are  invectives  against  the  peers  who  own  considerable 
districts  in  our  city.  Large  as  these  estates  are,  they 


412    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

do  not  account  for  a  quarter  of  the  area  or  the  popula- 
tion. So  far  from  these  being  the  districts  where 
suffering  is  greatest,  they  are  altogether  those  in 
which  it  is  least.  The  central,  eastern,  northern,  and 
southern  districts  of  London,  where  the  dukes  do  not 
own  a  house,  are  those  where  the  misery  and  over- 
crowding are  the  worst. 

Misery  and  overcrowding  as  great,  if  not  greater, 
are  found  in  Paris,  Berlin,  Naples,  Lyons,  Rouen, 
New  York,  and  Melbourne,  where  there  are  no 
Norman  barons,  no  dukes  owning  whole  quarters. 
Everybody  knows  that  Mr.  George's  famous  gates 
near  Euston  Square  were  set  up  for  the  convenience, 
not  of  the  duke,  but  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  quarter. 
They  are  doubtless  a  public  nuisance,  but  if  the  soil 
belonged  to  the  parish  we  might  have  a  dozen  more 
set  up.  This  is  a  specimen  of  the  rhetoric  to  which 
Mr.  George  treats  us.  Happily  our  English  reformers 
do  not  adopt  this  outlandish  style  of  reform.  I  am 
certainly  no  friend  of  landlordism  as  an  institution, 
or  of  aristocratic  social  traditions ;  I  am  for  radical 
land  reform  both  in  town  and  country  ;  but  justice 
forces  me  to  say,  that  amongst  our  great  landowners, 
both  in  town  and  country,  are  to  be  found  those  men 
who,  of  all  the  rich  and  powerful  in  England,  I  will 
say  of  all  the  rich  and  powerful  in  Europe,  administer 
their  estates  with  the  greatest  sense  of  social  duty  and 
responsibility  to  public  opinion.  And  when  we  have 
got  rid  of  them,  we  shall  have  got  rid  of  much  that  it 
will  take  us  a  long  time  to  replace. 

On  the  whole,  whilst  we  must  thank  the  Land 
Nationalisation  movement  for  directing  attention  to 
many  important  truths,  and  whilst  we  may  heartily  go 
along  with  the  spirit  which  inspires  it,  we  cannot 
accept  the  chimerical  hopes  and  the  blind  leap  in  the 
dark  which  it  offers  us  as  a  remedy  for  all  industrial 


SOCIAL  REMEDIES  413 

evils.  We  should  sacrifice  for  a  mere  dream  all  the 
solid  results  won  by  radical  reform  and  practical 
experiments  ;  for  it  would  plunge  us  into  a  social 
revolution  which  might  last  for  generations.  The 
talk  about  "planting  the  English  people  on  the  soil" 
is  surely  mere  words.  However  successful  the  plan, 
it  could  only  plant  about  one  in  ten  of  our  families  on 
the  soil.  The  twenty-six  millions  of  Englishmen  can- 
not all  be  planted  on  the  soil ;  they  are  not  Swiss  or 
Norwegian  woodcutters,  nor  are  they  all  desirous  of 
retiring  to  the  country  on  a  competence.  And  when 
they  were  planted  on  the  soil,  how  would  they  live 
and  earn  a  living  if  they  have  neither  capital  nor  skill 
to  work  it  ?  We  might  as  well  talk  of  planting  the 
English  people  in  the  shops,  or  warehouses,  or  offices 
of  England.  What  would  they  do  when  they  got 
into  the  offices  and  shops  without  capital  or  business 
habits  ?  A  tailor  presented  with  a  cottage  and  ten 
acres  would  starve  as  quickly  as  a  farmer  would  starve 
if  presented  with  a  lawyer's  business  as  a  going  con- 
cern. There  are  now  thousands  of  farms  "on  hand" 
because,  rent  or  no  rent,  there  is  no  one  with  capital 
and  skill  who  cares  to  take  them. 

Of  the  State  management  of  capital,  i.e.  of  simple 
Communism,  I  say  little  now.  We  have  not  before 
us  a  definite  statement  of  the  views  propounded  by 
any  systematic  school  of  Communism.  There  are 
several  organised  bodies  putting  forward  proposals  of  a 
more  or  less  Communistic  character ;  and  within  our 
generation  we  have  seen  several  Socialist  movements 
of  a  more  or  less  systematic  kind.  In  what  I  say  now 
I  speak  of  no  body  in  particular.  I  shall  deal  with 
the  Socialist  and  Communist  language  which  is  to  be 
heard  nowadays  in  several  quarters,  both  within  and 
without  the  publicly  constituted  bodies.  There  is  not 
a  little  floating  Socialism  current  around  us.  I  neither 


fear  nor  despise  Communism.  I  am  anything  but 
opposed  to  its  motive  spirit  or  its  aspirations.  I 
honour  its  generous  instincts,  and  I  sympathise  with 
much  in  its  social  aims  ;  for  undoubtedly  some  of  the 
noblest  characters  of  our  day  are  in  sympathy  with 
them,  and  it  counts  in  its  ranks  men  of  heroic 
devotion  to  a  social  ideal.  Nor  need  we  undervalue 
its  forces  and  the  future  destiny  before  it. 

On  the  continent  of  Europe  it  is  already  one  of  the 
mighty  factors  of  social  evolution.  We  shall  have  it 
here,  I  doubt  not ;  though  hardly  in  any  form  that  is 
yet  presented  to  us.  But  in  what  form,  in  what  system, 
with  what  doctrines,  is  Communism  presented  to 
Englishmen  to-day  ?  The  Communism  which  alone 
has  ever  had  a  serious  following — the  Communism  of 
Owen,  Fourier,  Saint-Simon,  Lassalle,  and  Karl  Marx 
— had  a  social  system  of  some  kind,  a  body  of  logical 
doctrines,  and  an  ideal  of  human  society,  however 
vague  and  extravagant.  But  the  Socialism  in  many 
quarters  now  preached  amongst  us  has  none  of  these 
— neither  economical  theory,  nor  social  scheme,  nor 
system  of  life  of  any  kind.  It  offers  nothing  but 
invectives  against  the  rich,  fancy  figures  for  its 
statistics,  and  appeals  to  the  poor  to  begin  a  social 
insurrection.  It  has  no  economic,  social,  or  political 
doctrines.  It  propounds  no  intelligible  religious 
principle — no  scheme  of  morality,  of  government,  of 
institutions,  of  education,  of  domestic,  industrial,  or 
civic  life. 

Now  no  real  insurrection  was  ever  made  by  pure 
anarchists.  The  people  must  have  something  to 
believe  in,  to  hope  for,  and  work  for,  before  they 
will  seriously  rise.  Incitements  to  plunder  and  to 
destroy  do  not  touch  the  people,  who  need  some  great 
moral  cause  and  some  ideal  in  view  to  stir  them  pro- 
foundly. But  Communism,  as  presented  in  England, 


SOCIAL  REMEDIES  415 

offers  no  moral  cause,  no  ideal.  It  has  never  faced, 
and  has  nothing  to  say  about  any  one  of  the  great 
social  problems,  about  religion,  morality,  education, 
government,  public  or  domestic  duty.  It  is  not 
Communism :  it  is  mere  Nihilism.  Communism 
implies  the  systematic  organisation  of  life  on  the 
principle  of  community  and  not  of  individualism. 
This  Nihilism,  which  pretends  to  be  Communism, 
simply  proposes  the  confiscation  of  property.  How 
the  capital  so  confiscated  is  to  be  worked — under  what 
moral  code,  by  what  institutions,  and  for  what  social 
aim — on  this  it  has  nothing  to  say. 

How  can  it  have  ?  The  small  knots  of  propa- 
gandists whom  we  find  here  and  there — some  of  them 
in  organised  societies,  some  in  the  press,  the  pulpit,  or 
on  platforms — seem  to  have  no  agreement  about  these 
things.  Some  are  ministers  of  the  Gospel ;  some  pro- 
fess materialism  pure  and  simple ;  others  belong  to 
every  intermediate  phase  of  opinion.  Their  views 
about  morality,  education,  government,  and  society 
are  equally  various.  Now,  although  an  economist  is 
not  bound,  as  such,  to  have  any  moral,  religious,  or 
educational  programme,  a  Communist  is  bound  ;  for 
if  people  are  to  work  in  common  they  must  be  trained 
in  common.  Every  serious  Socialist  or  Communist 
school  has  provided  for  this.  The  interesting  part 
about  true  Communism  is  that  it  so  fully  realises  the 
impossibility  of  production  on  a  Communistic  basis 
without  a  complete  set  of  institutions  to  mould  life 
generally  on  a  corresponding  basis. 

All  true  Communists  have  seen  that  it  is  impossible 
to  found  a  Communistic  mode  of  industry  without 
destroying  private  life.  Hence  they  begin  by  attempt- 
ing to  found  a  set  of  social,  family,  and  religious  insti- 
tutions to  eradicate  all  traces  of  individualism.  If 
they  do  not  do  this  they  know  that  Communism  in 


416    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

labour  is  impossible.  But  the  various  groups  who  in 
England  to-day  advocate  some  vague  Communistic 
proposals  do  none  of  these  things.  They  may  de- 
nounce our  social  sores,  they  may  call  every  man  who 
does  not  agree  with  them  mere  bourgeois  (to  these 
young  gentlemen  even  trades  unionists  and  co- 
operators  are  all  bourgeois — the  real  English  work- 
man does  not  even  know  the  word  bourgeois] ;  but, 
in  the  absence  of  any  social  scheme,  they  will  not 
penetrate  the  body  of  English  workmen. 

Communism  in  a  systematic  form  is,  perhaps,  not 
advocated  amongst  us.  But  Communistic  proposals 
and  Socialist  schemes  have  little  meaning  unless  they 
can  be  placed  on  a  logical  footing.  The  only 
Communism  which  is  worth  serious  notice  is  that, 
complete  Communism  which  seeks  to  transform  all 
private  property  into  Collectivism,  or  common 
property.  It  would  be  strange  if  English  work- 
men, who  have  laboured  so  long  and  sacrificed  so 
much  in  order  to  share  with  their  fellows  some  of 
that  security  and  independence  which  the  legitimate 
use  of  property  gives,  and  who  have  organised 
patiently  such  powerful  agencies  for  checking  the 
abuses  of  property,  were  suddenly  to  declare  for  uni- 
versal confiscation  in  the  blind  chance  that  something 
might  come  of  it.  Trades  unions,  co-operative,  build- 
ing, land  societies,  and  the  rest  would  all  disappear, 
for  they  all  imply  the  institution  of  property. 

The  numerous  associations  of  which  we  have  here 
the  delegates  would  have  no  raison  d'etre.  There 
would  be  no  hope  of  a  plot  of  ground  for  the  country- 
man, of  secure  tenure  of  a  farm,  of  a  homestead  of  his 
own  for  any  of  us.  There  would  be  no  "  Union  "  on 
one  side  and  employer  on  the  other  ;  no  personal  rela- 
tion between  any  capitalist  and  any  labourer  or  any 
farmer.  There  would  be  but  one  employer,  one 


SOCIAL  REMEDIES  417 

capitalist,  one  proprietor,  one  general  manager  of 
everything  and  everybody.  That  one  would  be  the 
State.  But  what  is  the  State  in  any  intelligible  sense 
as  sole  landlord,  sole  capitalist,  sole  manager  ?  The 
State,  we  know,  collects  taxes  and  manages  the  army 
and  the  navy,  and  some  persons  are  not  satisfied  with 
the  way  that  these  trifles  are  managed.  But  what  is  the 
meaning  of  the  State,  the  possessions  of  which  should 
be  the  aggregate  capital  of  the  kingdom,  and  the 
spending  departments  of  which  would  have  to  pay 
in  earnings  alone  a  thousand  millions  a  year  to  twelve 
millions  of  persons  ?  And  on  what  principles,  by 
what  institutions,  and  what  machinery,  is  this  fabulous 
task  to  be  accomplished  ?  As  no  one  has  as  yet  given 
us  any  intelligible  answer  to  this  problem,  it  will  be 
wiser  to  adjourn  so  vast  a  question. 

From  all  that  I  have  said  it  will  appear  that,  whilst 
I  hold  as  strongly  as  any  man  that  our  industrial 
system  is  socially  unjust  and  unsound,  I  look  upon 
none  of  the  industrial  schemes  I  have  considered  as 
going  to  the  roots  of  the  question.  Our  industrial 
system  is  vicious,  because  our  moral,  religious,  and 
social  system  is  disorganised.  It  is  impossible  to 
regenerate  industry  until  we  also  regenerate  society. 
Trades  unions,  co-operation,  and  all  the  mutual  benefit 
movements,  are  useful  in  their  way,  but  they  only 
touch  the  surface.  Land  confiscation  could  only 
affect  a  minority,  and  would  not  very  clearly  benefit 
them.  Land  confiscation  is  only  a  fragmentary  and 
partial  kind  of  Communism  ;  and  Communism  itself, 
as  we  hear  of  it  to-day,  is  only  a  more  sweeping  con- 
fiscation, and  a  fragmentary  and  partial  kind  of  social 
disorganisation.  Property  is  only  one  of  many  social 
institutions  ;  and  industry  is  only  one  of  many  human 
duties.  To  make  property  a  little  more  common, 
more  accessible,  to  check  some  abuses  of  property  here 

2  E 


4i8    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

and  there,  may  be  exceedingly  useful  when  wisely 
accomplished ;  but  it  cannot  in  itself  alter  human 
nature,  life,  and  society.  Even  to  abolish  property, 
and  to  make  a  strict  code  for  industry,  is  only  to  get 
rid  of  one  social  institution,  and  to  regulate  one  of 
many  human  duties.  To  expect  a  millennium  from 
any  kind  of  partial  remedy  is  like  giving  pills  to  cure 
a  fever.  Industry  can  only  be  regenerated  by  re- 
generating society.  And  society  can  only  be  regenerated 
by  sound  religion,  true  morality,  right  education,  wise 
institutions,  and  good  government. 

The  root  of  the  matter  is  that  we  can  only  change 
the  general  conditions  of  industry  by  changing  the 
spirit  in  which  industry  is  carried  on  ;  and  we  can 
only  gain  partial  and  temporary  improvements  by 
mending  this  or  that  industrial  institution.  Whilst 
men  as  a  rule  pursue  their  own  desires  and  interests, 
the  strongest  and  the  most  lucky  will  get  the  best  of 
it,  and  the  weak  and  the  unfortunate  will  be  cruelly 
used.  And  such  is  the  ingenuity  of  human  skill  and 
the  force  of  self-interest,  that,  alter  as  we  please  the 
mechanical  modes  in  which  industry  is  arranged,  the 
strong  and  the  fortunate  soon  contrive  to  turn  them 
to  their  own  advantage.  The  best  proof  of  this  is  to 
be  found  in  Mr.  George's  own  books,  especially  in 
his  last.  He  shows  us  that  the  industrial  evils  he 
denounces  grow  to  immense  proportions  where  all  the 
social  conditions  and  industrial  arrangements  are 
varied,  and  society  begins  with  a  mere  tabula  rasa. 
Almost  the  only  point  in  which  the  Pacific  territories 
of  America  originally  resembled  England  was  this, 
that  the  passion  of  self-interest  was  imperfectly  con- 
trolled by  a  sense  of  social  duty,  and  in  the  case  of  the 
States  was  even  abnormally  stimulated.  Here  then, 
in  human  nature,  without  sufficient  moral  control,  is 
the  source  of  all  this  evil ;  and  it  is  melancholy  to  see 


SOCIAL  REMEDIES  419 

a  man  of  genius  labouring  by  a  set  of  sophisms,  each 
more  preposterous  than  the  last,  to  show  that  its  source 
is  in  property  in  land. 

If  the  cause  of  industrial  misery  be  traced  to  the 
passion  of  self-interest,  and  to  a  low  sense  of  social 
duty,  there  might  seem  to  be  no  more  to  be  said. 
We  should  have  to  wait  for  a  general  improvement  in 
civilisation.  But  there  is  more  to  be  said.  Industry 
has  managed  to  develop  a  moral  code  of  its  own.  In 
politics,  philosophy,  art,  or  manners,  in  domestic  or 
social  life,  self-interest  is  not  canonised  as  the  principal 
social  duty  of  man.  In  industry  it  is  otherwise.  For 
all  industrial  matters,  in  modern  Europe  and  America, 
a  moral  code  has  been  evolved,  which  makes  the  un- 
limited indulgence  of  self-interest,  pushed  to  the  very 
verge  of  liability  to  law,  the  supreme  social  duty  of 
the  industrious  citizen.  To  buy  cheap,  to  sell  dear, 
to  exhaust  the  arts  of  competition,  to  undersell  rivals, 
to  extend  business,  to  develop  trade,  to  lend  on  the 
best  security,  to  borrow  at  the  lowest  rate,  to  introduce 
every  novelty,  to  double  and  to  halve  business  at  every 
turn  of  the  market — in  a  word,  to  create  the  biggest 
business  in  the  least  time,  and  to  accumulate  the 
greatest  wealth  with  the  smallest  capital  —  this  is 
seriously  taught  as  the  first  duty  of  trading  man. 

Economists,  politicians,  moralists,  and  even  preachers 
urge  on  the  enterprising  capitalist  that  the  industrialist 
does  best  his  duty  by  society  who  does  best  his  duty 
by  himself.  Banker,  merchant,  .manufacturer,  pro- 
prietor, tradesman,  and  workman  alike  submit  to  this 
strange  moral  law.  Almost  the  only  class  of  capitalists 
in  this  island  who  do  not  as  a  rule  accept  it  are,  in 
truth,  those  great  landlords  who  are  the  principal 
object  of  modern  attack.  It  is  assumed  as  beyond 
proof  that  the  rapid  increase  of  business,  the  great 
accumulation  of  wealth,  is  a  good  per  se — good  for 


420    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

the  capitalist,  good  for  society.  No  account  is  taken 
of  the  business  ruined,  of  the  workmen  thrown  out  of 
employment,  of  the  over-production,  of  the  useless, 
mischievous,  rotten  trade  created,  and  of  all  the 
manifold  evils  scattered  broadcast  amongst  the  pro- 
ducers and  every  one  within  range  of  the  work.  It  is 
enough  to  have  made  business,  to  have  accumulated 
wealth,  without  coming  within  the  grasp  of  the  law. 

Here,  then,  is  the  all-sufficient  source  of  industrial 
maladies.  We  have  come,  in  matters  industrial,  to 
treat  duty  to  others,  and  duty  to  society,  as  only  to  be 
found  in  duty  to  self.  If  all  employers  were  as  thought- 
ful of  the  general  welfare  of  those  they  employ  as  they 
are  now  eager  to  get  the  most  out  of  them  j  if  all 
producers  were  as  anxious  for  good,  sound,  and 
useful  production  as  they  are  for  paying  production  ; 
if  those  who  lend  money  considered  not  only  the 
security  and  the  interest,  but  the  purpose  for  which 
the  money  was  sought ;  if  those  who  develop  new 
works  thought  more  of  the  workers  than  of  possible 
profits,  industry  would  not  be  what  we  see  it.  In 
other  words,  the  solution  of  the  industrial  problem  is  a 
moral,  social,  and  religious  question.  INDUSTRY  MUST 
BE  MORALISED — infused  with  a  spirit  of  social  duty 
from  top  to  bottom,  from  peer  to  peasant,  from 
millionaire  to  pauper.  But  to  moralise  society  is  the 
business  of  moralists,  preachers,  social  teachers  ;  the 
economist  has  but  little  more  to  add,  and  his  field  is 
not  here.  But  here  I  must  pause.  This  Conference 
is  no  place  for  moralising  or  preaching ;  neither 
religion  nor  social  science  have  their  pulpits  here. 
And,  for  myself,  anything  1  could  say  I  must  reserve 
for  another  place. 


V 

SOCIALIST   UNIONISM 

(1889) 

The  twenty-five  years  that  had  passed  since  the  writer's  essay 
on  Trades  Unionism  in  1863  (No.  II.  of  this  Part  II.} 
had  made  a  great  change  in  the  Labour  world.  The 
growth  of  Marxian  Socialism  in  Europe  reacted  in 
England,  and  the  energy  of  the  Social  Democratic 
Federation  made  its  mark  on  English  politics.  The  great 
Dock  Strike  of  1889  made  the  public  aware  of  the  pro- 
found change  that  was  slowly  taking  place.  Another 
twenty  years  has  very  nearly  passed,  and  the  movement 
has  gone  forward  on  lines  much  as  the  writer  foresaw  in 
this  Essay  which  appeared  in  the  Nineteenth  Century 

(vol.  XXV '/.). 

The  most  startling  result  of  the  new  Industrial  move- 
ment was  seen  in  the  enormous  Liberal  majority  at  the 
General  Election  of  1906,  which  placed  in  the  Cabinet 
one  of  the  prominent  leaders  of  the  Social  Democrats,  who 
had  been  sent  to  prison  for  his  share  in  the  Bloody  Sunday 
riot,  who  led  the  people  down  Piccadilly  and  Hyde  Park, 
and  engineered  the  Dockers'1  Strike. 

There   are   signs   to-day   of  the   inevitable   reaction. 

The  bourgeoisie  is  getting  uneasy  at  the  sight  of  real 

Socialism  in  Parliament  and  at  Elections  ;  and  the  utter 

incoherence  of  Karl  Marx's  dogmas  and  the  anarchic 

421 


422    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

language  of  many  of  his  noisy  followers  seem  destined 
again  to  separate  middle-class  Liberalism  from  any  present 
•   type  of  Labour  Socialism  (1908). 

WITHIN  the  last  few  years  Trades  Unionism  has  been 
transformed  under  the  influence  of  two  main  forces: — 
one  being  that  profound  social  lever  which  is  vaguely 
known  as  Socialism  ;  the  other  being  the  transfer  to 
its  side  of  Public  Opinion. 

Thirty  years  ago,  in  the  'fifties,  the  old  orthodox 
Economy  was  dominant ;  it  received  the  superstitious 
veneration  of  the  whole  capitalist  class  ;  and  it  more 
or  less  overawed  the  leaders  of  the  labouring  class. 
To-day  the  old  orthodox  Economy — the  Gospel,  or 
the  Sophism,  of  Supply  and  Demand,  absolute  Freedom 
for  Individual  Exertion,  and  so  forth  —  all  this  is 
ancient  history.  "We  are  all  Socialists  now,"  cries 
an  eminent  statesman  in  jest  or  in  earnest.  And  the 
jest  has  earnest  in  it,  if  we  take  Socialism  to  mean, 
not  the  substitution  of  some  communistic  Utopia  for  the 
old  institutions  of  Capital  and  Labour,  but  rather  the 
infusion  of  all  economic  and  political  institutions  with 
social  considerations  towards  social  ends.  Thirty  years 
ago  Socialism  was  a  mere  outlandish  day-dream.  It  is 
now,  in  the  new  vague  sense,  as  a  modifying  tendency, 
a  very  real  force.  And  it  has  killed  the  old  Targum 
about  Supply  and  Demand  —  the  plain  English  of 
which  was — "  May  the  devil  take  the  weakest  !  " 

In  the  same  way,  within  thirty  years,  the  enormous 
power  of  Public  Opinion  has  passed  over  to  the  side  of 
Trades  Unionism.  In  old  days  a  great  strike  was 
invariably  denounced  by  the  combined  force  of  the 
cultivated  and  capitalist  classes.  The  press,  the  pulpit, 
the  platform,  society,  and  the  legislature  rang  with 
menace  and  invective  about  the  innate  wickedness  of  all 
strikes.  If  here  and  there  a  clergyman,  a  professional 
man,  a  politician,  or  a  writer  ventured  to  raise  a  voice 


SOCIALIST  UNIONISM  423 

on  behalf  of  the  unions,  he  was  assailed  with  a  storm 
of  ridicule  and  abuse,  and  was  often  boycotted  in  his 
daily  life.  The  well-known  and  most  successful  head 
of  a  certain  college  was  almost  deprived  of  his  office 
by  the  trustees  for  defending  the  unions  in  public.1 

When  my  name  was  proposed  as  a  member  of  the 
Trades  Union  Commission  of  1867,  the  appointment 
was  hotly  opposed  as  a  dangerous  precedent ;  and  more 
than  one  eminent  solicitor  calmly  told  me  that,  if  I 
consented  to  serve,  I  must  expect  to  quit  the  legal  pro- 
fession. If  we  sought  to  justify  a  strike  to  the  public, 
we  had  the  greatest  difficulty  in  getting  a  word  into 
the  press  edgewise,  and  a  quiet  statement  of  the  true 
facts  was  almost  systematically  suppressed.  Trades 
Unionism  was  spoken  of  much  as  we  now  hear  men 
speak  of  Russian  Nihilism  ;  and  a  strike  was  con- 
demned in  the  same  language  in  which  men  now 
condemn  the  resort  to  dynamite.  To  the  last  genera- 
tion of  the  educated  and  employing  classes,  a  Strike 
had,  indeed,  all  the  elements  of  a  dynamite  outrage. 
It  could  not  raise  wages  one  farthing  ;  it  could  only 
increase  the  sufferings  of  its  infatuated  partisans  ;  it 
could  only  annoy  and  embitter  the  capitalist ;  and 
those  who  abetted  it  were  the  workman's  worst 
enemies. 

Things  are  indeed  changed  now.  We  have  just 
seen  one  of  the  greatest  strikes  on  record  carried  to  a 
successful  issue  with,  and  mainly  by,  the  support  and 
encouragement  of  the  public.2  The  press  was  uni- 
formly fair  ;  and,  very  generally,  aided  the  movement. 
No  sooner  were  the  docks  empty  than  money  poured 
into  the  strike  fund,  not  only  from  thousands  of 
British  unions  but  from  across  the  seas,  and  from  the 
wealthy  and  the  governing  classes  in  all  directions.  "We 

I  How  different  to-day  after  the  legislation  of  1907  !   (1908). 

II  The  Dock  Strike  of  1889,  engineered  by  Mr.  John  Burns. 


424  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

were  pelted  with  cheques,"  says  the  treasurer,  and  in 
a  few  weeks  upwards  of  ^40,000  was  given.  No 
Mansion-House  Fund  in  a  great  national  disaster,  says 
John  Burns,  could  have  been  "  responded  to  with  more 
extravagant  generosity."  In  one  memorable  case,  at 
least,  a  great  employer — Mr.  Henry  Lafone — himself 
gave  strike  pay  to  his  own  men,  when,  under  a  sense 
of  social  duty,  they  left  his  works  empty.  The  Stock 
Exchange  raised  a  handsome  sum  towards  the  fund  in 
a  few  minutes.  Merchants  and  merchants'  clerks 
cheered  the  strikers  as  they  passed  the  warehouses  in 
the  City.  London  saw,  without  uneasiness  or  ill-will, 
50,000  men  on  the  verge  of  starvation  pass  in  procession 
through  the  streets.  Politicians,  clergymen,  writers, 
and  capitalists  backed  up  their  demands  with  word  and 
with  purse.  Churches  of  all  creeds,  educational  and 
charitable  institutions,  gave  their  help.  Catholics 
and  Salvationists,  Tories  and  Radicals  for  once  com- 
bined. The  police  for  once  were  cheered  by  the 
East-End  agitators.  John  Burns  carried  his  tens  of 
thousands  up  and  down,  like  a  Pied  Piper  of  Hamelin, 
amidst  a  sympathetic  world  of  bystanders — as  of  men 
bewitched.  The  very  dogs  of  journalism  forgot  to 
bark.  The  East- End  shopkeepers  gave  credit  for 
goods.  The  pawnbrokers  refused  interest,  and  lodging- 
house  keepers  refused  their  rent.  Finally  a  Lord 
Mayor,  a  Cardinal,  a  Bishop  of  London,  and  some 
prominent  politicians,  succeeded  in  bringing  about 
peace  in  this  tremendous  upheaval  of  industry. 

Cardinal  Manning,  whose  part  in  this  matter  shows 
out  the  Catholic  Church  on  its  grandest  side,  a  side 
whereon,  as  Ireland,  Liverpool,  Glasgow,  and  London 
can  prove,  it  is  perhaps  as  much  alive  as  it  ever  was, 
declares  that  "since  the  Cotton  Famine  of  the  North 
there  has  been  no  nobler  example  of  self-command 
than  we  have  seen  in  the  last  month."  "  In  the  great 


SOCIALIST  UNIONISM  425 

and  extraordinary  movement  just  ended,"  writes  John 
Burns,  "the  cause  of  labour  has  been  the  popular 
cause  the  whole  world  over."  "  The  whole  East 
End,"  he  adds,  "rose  and  stood  up  alongside  of  us." 
"  The  greatest  struggle  between  Capital  and  Labour 
that  this  generation  of  Englishmen  has  seen,"  writes 
Mr.  Champion,  "has  ended  in  the  victory  of  the 
weaker  side."  "It  marks  an  epoch  not  merely  in 
the  history  of  labour,  but  of  England — nay,  even 
of  humanity,"  says  Lord  Rosebery  in  his  midnight 
address  to  the  tram  servants.  And  when  he  opens  a 
meeting  to  consider  the  formation  of  a  new  Union, 
avowedly  as  Chairman  of  the  London  County  Council, 
his  bold  and  sagacious  act,  so  full  of  the  new  spirit 
that  animates  the  citizens  of  London,  is  heartily 
approved  by  all  but  the  professional  critics  of  the  other 
party.  Truly  the  days  are  changed  for  the  better 
since  a  Strike  was  treated  as  a  social  outrage,  and  to 
advocate  Trades  Unions  was  to  be  marked  as  a  "  wild 
man." 

We  have  just  witnessed  not  merely  the  greatest 
and  most  rapidly  successful  strike  of  our  time,  but  we 
have  seen  an  epidemic  of  strikes.  There  were  at 
one  time,  in  August  (1889),  100,000  men  on  strike 
along  the  riverside.  Hundreds  of  different  trades  took 
part  in  it.  Within  a  few  months  nearly  200  different 
trades,  according  to  John  Burns,  have  gained  an  advance 
of  10  per  cent  in  wages  with  a  reduction  of  hours. 
More  than  100,000  new  members  have  been  enrolled 
in  Unions.  The  labour  problem  has  become  a  prime 
political  interest.  Statesmen,  editors,  churches,  and 
leagues  put  labour  questions  in  the  front  rank.  Gas- 
stokers,  coal-whippers,  sailors,  tram-drivers,  women, 
are  forming  unions.  The  children  in  schools  all  over 
the  country  play  truant  in  strike.  Great  and  stubborn 
as  were  the  contests  maintained  by  the  old  Unionism 


426    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  the  last  generation,  the  new  Unionism  of  to-day 
immensely  surpasses  it  in  extent  and  in  energy.  What 
is  the  difference  ? 

The  old  ideas  about  Unions  and  strikes  have  been 
entirely  icversed.  It  used  to  be  an  axiom  that  the 
unskilled  labourers,  singly,  stood  almost  no  chance  at  all. 
Yet  unskilled  labourers  have  just  won  in  the  greatest 
strike  on  record.  It  was  a  truism  that  no  great  and 
prolonged  strike  could  possibly  succeed  without  a  solid 
Union  behind  it.  Yet  here  a  vast  strike  has  succeeded 
without  a  Union  ;  and  the  Union  has  followed,  and 
not  preceded  the  strike.  It  used  to  be  held,  that 
where  the  supply  of  labour  is  practically  unlimited,  the 
idea  of  a  strike  is  rank  suicide.  Yet  here,  with  the 
whole  population  of  these  islands  whereon  to  draw 
for  unskilled  labour,  mighty  and  wealthy  companies 
have  failed  to  fill  their  empty  docks. 

The  new  element  is  this.  The  trades  have  stood 
by  one  another  as  they  never  did  before.  The  skilled 
workmen  have  stood  by  the  unskilled  workmen  in  a 
wholly  new  spirit,  and  public  opinion  supported  the 
men  as  it  never  has  done  yet.  In  all  the  thirty  years 
that  I  have  closely  studied  the  labour  movement,  I  have 
never  before  known  the  best-paid  and  most  highly 
skilled  trades  strike  out  of  mere  sympathy,  simply  to 
help  the  unskilled,  where  they  had  no  dispute  of  their 
own.  The  skilled  trades  have  often  offered  generous 
aid  in  money  to  other  trades.  But  they  never  have 
struck  work  themselves,  without  asking  or  expecting 
any  direct  advantage  for  the  sacrifice.  In  the  strike 
of  the  Dock  labourers  the  whole  brunt  of  the  struggle 
lay  in  the  turn-out  of  the  stevedores,  lightermen, 
sailors,  engineers,  and  other  skilled  men.  It  was  a 
general  mutiny,  led  and  commanded  by  the  sergeants 
and  corporals  in  mass.  This  was  the  cause  of  the  ex- 
cellent discipline  and  rapid  organisation  of  the  strikers, 


SOCIALIST  UNIONISM  427 

and  it  was  also  the  ground  of  their  success.  Without 
the  stevedores  and  other  skilled  officers,  unskilled 
labour,  even  if  it  could  be  found,  would  have  been 
useless  in  the  Docks. 

There  has  been,  then,  through  the  whole  East 
End — indeed,  through  the  whole  of  London  and  of 
the  kingdom — a  sympathetic  combination  of  work- 
men more  rapid  and  more  electric  than  anything  seen 
before.  We  have  witnessed  what  in  the  Continental 
jargon  used  to  be  called  the  "solidarity  of  labour,"  or 
the  "  fraternity  of  workmen  " — a  perfectly  real  and 
very  powerful  force,  when  it  can  be  organised  and 
brought  into  practical  result.  It  simply  means  the 
common  interest  of  all  the  toiling  millions  to  help 
each  other  towards  their  social  improvement.  Now, 
the  old  Unionism  has  often  been  charged  (and  not 
without  reason)  with  its  defects  on  this  side.  The 
older  Unions  have  long  been  afflicted  with  the  tendency 
so  often  remarked  in  religious  sects  which,  after  man- 
fully resisting  persecution  in  bygone  times,  have  grown 
exclusive,  hide- bound,  retrograde,  and  the  slaves  of 
their  own  investments.  Some  years  ago  (in  1885)  I 
ventured  to  point  out  in  the  Industrial  Remuneration 
Conference  (Report^  p.  437)  that  in  two  generations 
Unionism  has  shown  itself  powerless  to  reach  the 
residuum,  or  to  combine  the  great  average  mass  ;  that 
it  tended  to  sectional  and  class  interests  ;  to  divide 
trade  from  trade,  members  from  non-members  ;  that 
it  accentuates  the  gulf  between  the  skilled  and  well- 
paid  artisan  and  the  vast  destitute  residuum. 

The  new  Unionism  is  a  very  different  thing.  It 
has  welded  into  the  same  ranks  skilled  and  unskilled  : 
it  organises  the  average  mass  and  takes  charge  of  the 
residuum  ;  it  has  extinguished  sectional  interests ;  and 
it  is  not  absorbed  in  contemplation  of  its  own  cash 
balances.  Years  and  years  ago  we  laboured  to  convince 


428     NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

employers  that  an  established  Union  was  a  strongly 
conservative  power,  that  it  checked  strikes,  and  often 
tended  to  prevent  a  rise  of  wages.  The  minority 
report  of  the  Trades  Union  Commission,  1869 
(p.  xxxvi.),  pointed  out  that  the  strongest  and  richest 
Unions  coincide  with  the  greatest  fixity  in  wages  and 
hours,  and  the  fewest  trade  disputes.  In  1883  I  pointed 
out  to  the  Nottingham  Congress  that  the  great 
societies  for  years  past  had  not  spent  more  than  I  or  2 
per  cent  of  their  income  in  strikes.  The  permanent 
officials  of  a  great  Union,  with  an  income  of  ^50,000, 
and  cash  balances  of  twice  or  three  times  that  amount, 
easily  acquire  the  cautious,  thrifty,  contented,  rest- 
and-be-thankful  temper  of  a  bank  director  or  a  City 
magnate.  A  famous  old  banker  in  Fleet  Street  was 
once  told  by  a  pushing  bill-discounter  of  the  new 
American  type,  that,  by  a  very  simple  operation,  he 
could  easily  add  to  his  profits  another  ^20,000  a  year. 
"  But  I  don't  want  another  ^20,000  a  year,"  said  the 
worthy  old  man.  And  I  knew  many  a  Unionist 
secretary  of  the  old  school  who  firmly  believed  that 
the  subscribers  to  his  society  did  not  want  the 
"  tanner,"  and  would  do  no  good  with  it,  if  they 
got  it. 

Between  Unionism  of  that  type  and  the  Socialists 
there  has  raged  for  some  years  past  an  internecine 
war.  Furious  accusations  have  been  bandied  about 
on  both  sides.  Socialists  charged  the  Unions  with 
bolstering  up  and  stereotyping  the  miseries  of  the 
present  industrial  system,  by  thinking  more  of  "super- 
annuation," "  benefits,"  and  "  cash  balances,"  than  of 
any  general  improvement  in  the  conditions  of  labour. 
Unionists  charged  Socialism  with  incoherent  raving 
about  impossible  Utopias,  whilst  doing  nothing  prac- 
tical to  protect  any  single  trade.  As  usual,  there  was 
a  good  deal  of  force  in  what  was  said  on  both  sides. 


SOCIALIST  UNIONISM  429 

Vague  rant  about  Capital  as  organised  plunder  buttered 
no  man's  parsnips,  and  did  not  take  ten  seconds  oft  the 
working  day.  On  the  other  hand,  it  was  a  poor  con- 
solation to  the  sweated  waistcoat-hand  to  be  told  that 
the  Amalgamated  Engineers  had  a  quarter  of  a  million 
in  the  bank. 

But  in  the  course  of  the  present  year  Socialism  and 
Trades  Unionism  have  been  fused ;  and  the  new 
Unionism  is  the  result.  At  last  a  modus  vivendi  has 
been  found,  with  an  alliance  offensive  and  defensive 
for  the  time  being.  Each  has  contributed  a  special 
element  of  its  own,  and  has  allowed  a  good  deal  of  its 
former  character  to  drop.  Socialism  has  contributed 
its  dominant  idea  of  betterment  all  along  the  industrial 
line,  whilst  borrowing  from  Unionism  its  regular 
organisation  and  practical  tactics  for  securing  a 
definite  trade  end.  Unionism  has  contributed  its 
discipline  and  business  experience,  whilst  dropping 
its  instinct  towards  mutual  insurance  "  benefits "  as 
the  essential  aim.  And  so  Socialism  for  the  nonce 
has  dropped  attack  on  the  institution  of  Capital.  The 
new  Unions  are  avowedly  trade  societies  to  gain  trade 
objects.  The  new  Socialism  is  bent  upon  objects  quite 
as  practical  as  those  of  any  Trade  Union,  and  really  the 
same.  The  joint  movement  may  either  be  described 
as  Socialism  putting  on  the  business  accoutrements 
of  a  Trades  Union — or  as  Unionism  suddenly  inspired 
with  the  passion  and  aspirations  of  the  Socialists.  The 
typical  secretary  of  the  old  Unionism  would  have  made 
a  respectable  branch  manager  of  a  Joint-Stock  Bank. 
The  typical  leader  of  the  new  Unionism  is  a  powerful 
club  orator  who  finds  himself  at  the  head  of  a  great 
political  movement. 

It  is  simple  justice  to  acknowledge  that  this  fusion 
is  the  work  of  one  man.  It  is  his  work  both  in 
original  conception  and  in  practical  application.  He 


430    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

fully  grasps  it  in  principle,  and  thoroughly  works  it 
out  in  act.  Where  many  men,  both  Socialists  and 
Unionists,  have  honestly  given  good  work,  John 
Burns  is  the  one  man  who  is  equally  prominent  both 
as  a  socialist  and  as  a  unionist.  Certainly  no  other 
Socialist  ever  raised  the  wages  of  two  hundred  trades 
within  a  few  months.  And  no  other  Unionist  ever 
brought  100,000  men  into  union  in  the  same  time. 
I  have  often  myself  been  strongly  opposed  to  Mr. 
Burns,  and  have  been  opposed  by  him  ;  and  I  daresay 
the  same  thing  will  happen  again.  But  I  cannot,  in 
justice,  deny  that  he  has  been  the  head  of  the  most 
extraordinary  labour  movement  of  our  time.  The 
recent  Strike,  from  a  simply  strategical  point  of  view, 
was  conducted  with  consummate  skill,  surprising 
energy  and  swiftness.  But  the  ferment  and  passion 
which  gathered  round  it,  and  which  is  still  rolling  on 
from  its  impulse,  is  a  fact  far  deeper  and  more  strange. 
A  great  Strike  is  at  best  a  grim,  cruel,  hardening  tussle, 
even  when  most  orderly  and  most  justifiable  ;  and  its 
anti-social  spirit  but  too  often  rouses  aversion  in  the 
disinterested  public. 

The  Strike  of  the  Docks  was  accompanied  with  a 
moral  lift  which  kindled  sympathy  throughout  the 
English  world.  John  Burns  contrived  to  fire  it  with 
a  sense  of  social  duty  as  its  key-note.  He  stood  up 
again  and  again  preaching  about  men's  duty  at  home 
and  abroad  ;  and  the  singular  hold  which  he  has  won 
over  the  masses  is  due  to  the  sense  that  he  is  regarded 
more  as  a  moral  reformer  than  as  a  strike-leader.  The 
movement,  as  he  said  himself,  became  more  like  the 
spread  of  a  religion  than  the  demand  of  a  rise  in  wages. 
Mothers  of  new-born  infants  had  them  carried  to  him 
through  the  crowd  that  he  might  put  his  hand  upon 
them  to  bring  luck.  Just  so  I  have  seen  women  in 
Italy  bring  their  children  to  Garibaldi  to  be  blessed. 


SOCIALIST  UNIONISM  431 

My  friend  Mr.  Broadhurst  occasionally,  I  believe,  ex- 
pounds the  Word,  but  I  do  not  think  that  such  an 
incident  has  ever  befallen  him.  As  orator,  leader, 
teacher,  and  general  in  the  field,  John  Burns  has 
obtained  amongst  the  workers  of  London  an  influence 
much  like  that  which  Gambetta  had  over  the  French 
peasants,  and  by  the  exercise  of  some  of  the  same  gifts. 
Whatever  be  his  gifts,  the  public  and  the  legislature 
will,  no  doubt,  soon  be  able  to  test  them.1 

Right  or  wrong,  full  of  promise  or  full  of  danger, 
as  it  may  be,  the  new  Unionism  is  a  very  great  force. 
It  has  already  produced  the  greatest  upheaval  recorded 
in  the  history  of  modern  industry,  one  which  a  states- 
man of  Cabinet  rank  has  described  as — "an  epoch  in 
the  history  of  labour  and  of  humanity."  But  as  yet 
we  are  only  in  the  beginning.  There  are  not  yet  a 
million  unionists  in  the  kingdom,  whilst  there  are  ten 
or  twelve  million  workers  of  both  sexes  who  might  be. 
The  new  trades  union  is  a  machine  far  simpler,  easier, 
more  rapidly  organised  than  the  old  ;  and  it  can  be 
formed  ad  hoc  for  any  given  occasion.  There  is 
thus  an  almost  unlimited  field  for  its  activity,  now 
that  Socialists  have  taken  to  aim  at  practical  results  by 
borrowing  the  discipline  and  machinery  of  a  true 
Trades  Union. 

Recent  events  may  serve  to  display  the  incredible 
folly  of  the  party  who  hoped  to  crush  out  Unionism 
at  the  time  of  the  Royal  Commission  in  1869.  They 
proposed  compulsory  legislation  to  divide  every  union 
fund  into  a  separate  trade  fund  and  a  separate  benefit 
fund  (Report^  p.  cxiii.).  As  the  minority  pointed  out 
(p.  Ixi.)  this  would  merely  force  the  Unions  to  devote 
a  large  proportion  of  their  resources  to  strikes,  and 
take  away  from  the  Union  officers  the  strong  tempta- 

1  As  Cabinet  Minister  to-day,  successful  head  of  a  great  department 
of  State  (1908). 


432   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

tion  to  avoid  disputes  in  order  to  accumulate  a  large 
balance.  What  the  enemies  of  the  Unions,  with 
suicidal  folly,  tried  to  compel  the  societies  to  become, 
i.e.  mere  trade  societies  or  fighting  unions  per  se,  that 
the  Socialists  have  now  induced  the  societies  to  do 
voluntarily,  or  rather  they  have  founded  new  Unions 
to  effect  that  object.  In  the  same  way  the  enemies 
of  the  Unions  proposed  to  the  legislature  to  make 
"  picketing  "  criminal.  The  recent  Strike  has  shown 
us  the  greatest  development  of  Picketing  ever  known. 
There  were  5000  "  pickets "  maintained  night  and 
day,  over  lines  thirty  or  forty  miles  in  extent,  by  land 
and  water  ;  and  the  discipline  and  vigilance  of  the 
cordon  were  as  exact  as  with  the  Prussians  at  the  siege 
of  Paris.  Without  these  "  pickets  "  the  Strike  would 
have  collapsed  in  a  week.  Yet,  in  spite  of  the  great 
extent  of  the  lines  and  the  desperation  of  starving 
men,  no  outrage  of  any  serious  consequence  was 
proved,  and  the  police  were  not  called  in  to  interfere. 
If  "picketing"  had  been  made  illegal  in  1869,  the 
recent  Strike  would  have  been  suppressed  by  the  resort 
to  cavalry,  as  they  do  so  constantly  abroad. 

A  brief  review  of  the  recent  Strike  is  not  the  place 
for  a  critical  estimate  of  the  new  Unionism  which 
carried  the  Strike  through  and  which  has  developed 
out  of  it.  We  wait  to  see  how  the  new  Unionism 
intends  to  work.  Its  opportuneness  and  its  strength, 
its  dangers  and  temptations,  are  patent  enough.  A 
Union  having  no  large  weekly  dues,  no  costly  deferred 
benefits,  and  no  complex  voting  machinery,  is  obviously 
a  more  handy  and  more  rapid  instrument  to  wield  than 
one  of  the  rich,  endowed,  conservative,  mutual-insur- 
ance Unions.  On  the  other  hand,  experience  has 
shown  that  a  mere  strike  society  has  no  backbone  and 
has  no  reserve  fund  to  meet  a  lock-out.  For  years 
the  unskilled  trades  have  been  forming  temporary 


SOCIALIST  UNIONISM  433 

unions  which  soon  die  out,  become  insolvent,  or 
encourage  foolish,  abortive  strikes.  A  union  with  a 
splendid  balance,  with  benefits  "  up  to  the  chin,"  and 
one  or  two  shillings  a  week  in  subscriptions,  is  apt  to 
get  as  timid  of  change  as  "  the  old  lady  in  Thread- 
needle  Street."  A  Union,  which  is  a  mere  fighting 
Club,  soon  exhausts  itself  in  defeats,  and  disgusts 
those  who  put  their  trust  in  its  promises  and  who 
gave  their  money  to  its  blunders.  The  permanent 
success  of  the  new  Unionism  still  remains  to  be  proved 
by  results  j  for  it  will  depend  on  the  judgment  and 
self-control  the  new  leaders  can  show.  They  have 
shown  an  energy,  a  swiftness,  and  a  burning  social 
enthusiasm  which  have  long  been  unknown  in  the 
rich  established  Unions  ;  and  they  have  thereby  seized 
a  grand  advantage  in  a  favourable  state  of  the  Labour 
Market.  But  they  will  suffer  terrible  reverses,  if  they 
ever  come  to  think  that  energy  and  fervour  will  avail, 
when  the  economic  conditions  of  the  Labour  Market 
are  dead  against  them. 

What  they  have  proved  is  this  :  and  it  is  most 
important.  Whereas  it  used  to  be  an  axiom  that 
unskilled  workers  in  an  open  trade  could  not  form 
regular  unions  or  sustain  a  prolonged  strike,  it  is  now 
shown  that  they  can.  It  used  to  be  thought  that  the 
very  poor,  the  casual  labourer,  those  who  have  no  local 
employment  (as  sailors),  and  women,  could  never  form 
a  substantial  union  or  a  serious  strike,  because  they 
could  not  afrbrd  weekly  subscriptions,  have  nothing  to 
fall  back  upon,  and  had  not  the  endurance,  discipline, 
esprit  de  corps^  and  patience  which  an  obstinate  struggle 
demands.  The  weakness  of  Unionism  was,  that  it 
was  only  available  to  the  skilled  men  in  good  wages, 
and  often  injured  rather  than  helped  the  great  unskilled 
mass.  John  Burns  has  lifted  that  reproach  from  it,  for 
he  has  had  the  sagacity  to  see  that  Unionism  hitherto 

2  F 


.434    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

has  been  presented  to  the  unskilled  in  far  too  costly 
and  elaborate  a  form  j  and  that  to  win  sympathy, 
Unionism  must  take  a  truly  social,  and  not  a  sectional, 
aim.  If  this  new  departure  can  be  maintained,  it 
amounts  to  a  revolution  in  industry. 

The  dead-weight  which  for  generations  has  pressed 
upon  labour  in  London  is  the  fact,  that  for  some 
fifteen  or  twenty  miles  on  both  sides  of  the  Thames 
there  has  been  a  floating  population  in  irregular 
employment,  of  casual  habits  and  migratory  bent.  It 
was  like  a  great  leak  in  the  bottom  of  the  ship.  East 
London  was  always  growing  bigger,  and  the  greater 
the  demand  for  labour,  the  larger  grew  the  swarm  of 
casual  labourers.  The  great  centre  of  disturbance 
was  the  Docks.  From  the  peculiar  conditions  of 
the  case,  and  under  the  fierce  competition  of  rival 
companies,  the  vast  shipping  business  of  the  Port 
of  London  stimulated  the  accumulation  along  the 
riverside  of  a  mass  of  labour  under-paid,  irregularly 
employed,  immensely  over-stocked,  and  under  the 
incessant  competition  of  numbers,  at  the  mercy  of 
the  pay-master.  Often  and  often  have  I  heard  in 
Unionist  meetings  indignant  appeals  against  work- 
men "being  treated  like  dock-labourers."  It  was 
the  familiar  instance  of  the  lowest  stage  of  industrial 
oppression. 

A  new  system  is  now  to  begin.  May  his  "  tanner  " 
benefit  the  dock-labourer  !  But  of  far  more  import- 
ance to  him  than  his  "tanner"  is  the  mitigation  of 
his  successive  hours,  of  the  irregular  turns  in  his  labour, 
of  all  mere  casual  hour-work.  And  above  all  important 
to  him  is  the  knowledge  that  he  can  now  defend  him- 
self by  combination,  that  he  is  just  as  capable  of 
discipline,  of  organised  resistance,  and  of  brotherly 
confidence  in  man  to  man,  as  is  the  Associated  Miner 
or  the  Amalgamated  Engineer.  The  grand  result  of 


SOCIALIST  UNIONISM  435 

the  Dock  Strike  is  this : — the  traditional  gulf  between 
"skilled"  and  "unskilled"  labour  has  ceased.  The 
new  Unionism  has  fused  them  into  one. 

But  the  new  Unionism  would  not  have  done  much 
if  Public  Opinion  had  not  gone  over  to  its  side. 
Thirty  or  forty  years  ago  the  whole  weight  of  English 
literature  and  current  opinion  backed  up  Capital 
always,  and  opposed  Labour  everywhere.  The 
Reform  agitation,  the  Chartist  movement,  the  year 
1848,  the  books  of  Carlyle,  Kingsley,  Maurice,  Ruskin, 
and  the  later  writings  of  Mill,  shook  the  orthodox 
gospel.  But  in  the  main  the  press,  Parliament,  and 
society  teemed  with  calumny  of  Unionism  and  all  its 
works.  The  great  strikes  of  1851-2-3  and  1858-9 
produced  a  deep  impression.  $ut  the  first  systematic 
attempt  to  judge  Unionism  fairly  was  made  by  the 
remarkable  Committee  of  the  Social  Science  Associa- 
tion, which  published  its  Report  in  1860.  On  that 
Committee  of  thirty-two  may  be  seen  the  names  of 
twelve  Members  of  Parliament,  four  subsequent 
Ministers  (including  H.  Fawcett,  W.  E.  Forster,  and 
George  S.  Lefevre),  five  civil  servants  of  the  Crown, 
and  twelve  men  of  letters  and  of  science.  That  book 
was  the  starting-point  of  honest  study  of  the  practical 
labour  problems.  Then  came  the  Royal  Commission 
of  Trades  Unions  in  1867-8-9,  when  the  extravagant 
proposals  of  the  economic  pedants  were  baffled  by  the 
steady  good  sense  and  the  popular  sympathies  of  two 
peers — Lord  Wemyss  and  Lord  Lichfield. 

Of  course  the  transfer  of  political  power  effected 
in  the  various  Reform  Acts  of  the  last  twenty  years 
has  exerted  a  profound  silent  revolution.  And  the  fact 
that  the  workmen  are  now  the  depositaries  of  power 
has  forced  the  rich  to  listen  to  their  demands  with 
a  hearing  entirely  new.  Along  with  a  re-casting  of 
our  whole  political  system  into  a  democratic  form, 


436    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

there  has  gone  during  the  last  twenty  years  an  immense 
movement  in  social  philosophy  and  social  politics. 
The  Commune  in  France,  the  land  struggle  in  Ireland, 
the  growth  of  Socialism  on  the  Continent,  the  teach- 
ing of  Karl  Marx,  Henry  George,  Mill,  Comte,  and 
those  whom  each  of  these  have  influenced,  have  con- 
tinually broken  up  the  old  economic  purism,  the 
gospel  of  laissez  fa'tre  and  unlimited  licence  to  indi- 
vidual selfishness.  Along  with  these  have  worked 
an  immense  body  of  organised  movements,  with  many 
different  schemes  and  with  widely  divergent  creeds, 
such  as  the  Salvation  Army,  Toynbee  Hall,  Newton 
Hall,  the  Social  Democratic  Federation,  the  Land 
Nationalisation  Societies,  and  all  the  other  agrarian 
movements  in  Ireland,  Scotland,  Wales,  and  England, 
with  Guilds,  Leagues,  and  Societies  innumerable  ; 
such  inquiries  as  those  of  the  Industrial  Conference  of 
1885,  Mr.  Charles  Booth's  Analysis  of  Labour  in 
East  London,  1889,  the  Trades  Union  Annual  Con- 
gress, and  all  the  various  types  of  Christian  Socialism 
that  are  weekly  preached  in  Church  and  Chapel. 

Socialism  in  any  systematic  or  definite  form,  as  a 
scheme  for  superseding  the  institution  of  Capital,  has 
not  as  yet  in  my  opinion  made  any  serious  way.  At 
least  I  know  of  no  coherent  scheme  for  eliminating 
individual  ownership  of  property  which  can  be  said  to 
have  even  a  moderate  following  of  rational  and  con- 
vinced adherents.  The  enthusiasts  who,  here  and 
there,  put  forth  such  schemes  are  not  really  under- 
stood by  those  whom  they  get  to  listen  to  them. 
But  Socialism,  as  meaning  the  general  desire  to  have 
all  the  arrangements  of  society,  economic,  legislative, 
and  moral,  controlled  by  social  considerations  and 
reformed  to  meet  paramount  social  obligations — this 
kind  of  Socialism  is  manifestly  in  the  ascendant. 
Such  Socialism,  I  mean,  as  is  found  in  Henry  George's 


SOCIALIST  UNIONISM  437 

powerful  book  called  Social  Problems^  where  we  have 
his  view  of  the  problem  apart  from  his  sophistical 
"  remedy."  The  old  satanic  gospel  of  laissez  falre 
is  dead  :  and,  in  the  absence  of  any  other  gospel  of 
authority,  a  vague  proclivity  towards  Socialism  comes 
to  the  front.1 

Whatever  name  we  give  it,  a  settled  conviction 
has  grown  up  in  the  conscience  of  serious  men  of  all 
schools,  that  society  in  its  present  form  presses  with 
terrible  severity  on  the  whole  body  of  those  who  toil 
in  the  lowest  ranks  of  labour.  And  from  Bismarck 
and  the  Pope  downwards  all  who  bear  rule,  and  all 
who  teach,  are  coming  to  feel  that  society  is  in  a  very 
rotten  state  whilst  that  continues.  We  are  all  waking 
up  to  see  (what  many  of  us  have  been  preaching  for 
years)  that  it  will  not  do,  and  must  be  mended  or 
ended.  Hence  when  100,000  men  along  the  river- 
side rose  up  to  protest  against  their  casual  employment 
and  their  miserable  pay,  the  world  very  generally, 
both  of  rich  and  poor,  thought  that  they  were  right, 
and  gave  them  encouragement  and  help.  People 
knew  something  definite  about  the  East  End  and 
London  Labour.  The  Mansion-House  Committees, 
the  House  of  Lords  Committee  on  Sweating,  the 
Royal  Commission  on  the  Housing  of  the  Poor,  the 
Industrial  Conference  of  1885,  the  experiences  of 
Beatrice  Potter,  the  studies  of  Charles  Booth  and  his 
friends,  and  all  that  for  years  has  been  said  and  done 
in  Toynbee  Hall,.  Bedford  Chapel,  Newton  Hall,  the 
Working  Men's  College,  the  Hall  of  Science,  the 
City  Temple,  and  a  thousand  platforms,  pulpits,  and 
clubs — had  made  men  think  and  given  them  matter 
for  thought.  Public  opinion  has  passed  over  to  the 

1  Twenty  years  have  made  a  great  difference  in  this  as  in  other 
things.  But  I  am  not  disposed  to  make  a  very  different  estimate  now 
(1908). 


438    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

side  of  the  labourer  ;  and  when  he  made  his  effort, 
public  opinion  helped  him  to  success. 

There  are  lessons  enough  for  every  one  in  what 
has  just  happened.  The  Socialist  of  the  Karl  Marx 
School  may  reflect  how  sterile  a  thing  Socialism  has 
proved  all  these  years  that  it  has  been  raving  out  its 
fierce  conundrums  about  the  wickedness  of  private 
property,  and  how  solid  are  the  results  to  be  won 
when  it  consents  to  enter  on  a  practical  business 
bargain.  The  violent  assailants  of  Trades  Unionism 
may  reflect  that  they  have  done  nothing  practical, 
until  they  resorted  to  Unionism  themselves  and 
adopted  its  familiar  tactics  and  its  well-tried  machinery. 
The  old  Unionist  may  reflect  that,  in  forty  years 
past,  the  conventional  Unionism  has  proved  utterly 
powerless  to  effect  what  in  a  few  weeks  two  or  three 
prominent  Socialists  have  done.  The  men  who  grow 
hoarse  in  declaiming  about  the  selfishness  and  brutality 
of  the  middle-classes  may  think  of  the  solid  assistance 
they  had  from  the  middle-classes  in  sympathy  and  in 
money.  And  the  middle-classes,  who  were  wont  to 
regard  the  East-End  labourer  as  a  feckless  or  dangerous 
loafer,  may  ponder  on  the  discipline,  honesty,  endur- 
ance, and  real  heroism  which,  in  defence  of  what  they 
knew  to  be  a  just  cause,  so  many  thousands  of  the 
poorest  of  the  poor  have  shown. 

The  Socialist  with  a  system  and  the  impatient 
reformer  generally  have  often  turned  with  mockery 
from  all  reliance  on  public  opinion  and  from  any  such 
doctrine  as  "  the  moralisation  of  industry."  When 
they  have  been  told  that — "  the  true  socialism  is  this  : 
the  use  of  Capital  must  be  turned  to  social  objects,  just 
as  Capital  arises  from  social  combination  "  : — when  it 
has  been  preached  to  them  that  "industry  must  be 
moralised  by  opinion^  not  recast  by  the  State— moralised 
by  education,  by  morality,  by  religion " — the  Socialist 


SOCIALIST  UNIONISM  439 

with  a  system  and  the  impatient  reformer  goes  off  with 
a  laugh  or  a  sneer.  Well !  but  this  is  what  has  just 
happened.  Public  Opinion  has  been  changed,  and  it 
has  worked  great  results.  Capital,  to  a  certain  extent, 
has  been  moralised,  and  Industry  also  has  been 
moralised.  The  very  poor  have  been  taught  to  feel 
self-respect  and  self-reliance,  to  bear  much  for  a 
common  cause,  to  practise  self-denial  for  a  social 
benefit.  The  rich  have  been  taught  to  listen  with 
more  sympathy  to  the  poor,  and  to  know  themselves 
as  responsible  for  the  sufferings  of  those  they  employ. 
What  has  happened  is  a  great  lesson  to  rich  and  poor, 
to  employers  and  employed,  in  the  imperishable  and 
paramount  force  of  Social  Duty  in  the  long  run. 
The  immediate  results  are  not  very  great.  But  it  is 
a  beginning  :  and  much  may  come  of  it.  In  the 
meantime,  the  persistent  appeal  to  the  public  con- 
science on  moral  and  social  grounds  has  done,  what 
Trades  Unionism  per  se  has  failed  to  do  in  forty  years, 
and  what  all  the  schemes  for  confiscating  private 
Capital  and  nationalising  private  property  have  only 
succeeded  in  hindering  and  delaying  being  done. 


VI 

MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  SOCIALISM 

(1891) 

From  the  foundation  of  Positivist  centres  by  Dr.  Gongreve  in 
1869,  the  writer  and  his  colleagues  had  continually  pre- 
sented the  industrial  theories  of  August  e  Comte  on  the 
platform  and  the  press.  As  President  of  the  Positivist 
Committee  down  from  the  year  1879,  he  consistently 
maintained  the  same  views  in  a  series  of  lectures,  and 
especially  in  the  Annual  Address  which  he  invariably 
delivered  on  New  Tear's  Day.  The  following  Discourse 
was  part  of  that  given  by  him  at  Newton  Hall  on 
January  JT,  1891. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  address  here  printed 
is  merely  an  extract  ;  simply  part  of  a  course  of  propaganda 
which  extended  over  more  than  thirty  years.  It  is 
obviously  a  sketch  —  or  brief  summary  of  principles.  If 
it  be  asked  in  what  way,  by  what  agencies,  and  under 
what  religious  ideal,  any  MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS 
SOCIALISM  could  be  ultimately  based  in  practice,  the 
answer  is  to  be  found  in  the  entire  synthesis  of  Positivist 
Ethic  and  religion  —  which  has  been  the  inspiration  of  the 
writer's  whole  active  life,  and  the  underlying  idea  of  this 
book  and  his  other  works 


IT  is  now,  I  think,  for  the  sixth  year  in  succession 
that  I  have  tried  to  direct  attention  to  the  growth  of 


440 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  SOCIALISM   441 

Socialism  in  England,  and  I  will  treat  it  more  in 
detail  on  this  occasion.  With  the  general  aim  and 
idea  of  Socialism,  Positivists,  of  course,  are  in  hearty 
sympathy.  With  almost  every  word  of  its  criticism 
on  the  actual  industrial  condition  of  Europe,  with  its 
indignant  rejection  of  the  pedantic  formulas  of  the  old 
Plutonomy,  we  entirely  concur.  With  its  main  prin- 
ciple that  all  material  wealth  is  the  common  product 
of  society  and  labour,  and  is  never  a  merely  individual 
creation,  we  are  wholly  in  agreement.  With  its 
repudiation  of  absolute  rights  of  Property,  and  its 
assertion  of  the  paramount  claims  of  Society  to  dispose 
of  all  that  which  could  have  no  existence  but  for 
Society  itself,  we  cordially  join.  Positivism  is,  in  a 
large  and  true  sense  of  the  word,  itself  an  organised 
Socialism.  Its  whole  scheme  of  life,  of  education,  and 
of  industry  is  essentially  a  mode  of  socialism  —  but 
socialism  with  a  difference.  And  that  difference  is, 
that  Positivism  is  a  complete,  universal,  and  religious 
socialism — not  a  socialism  limited  to  material  products. 
It  is  a  socialism  founded  on  social  science  and  inspired 
by  religion. 

There  is  no  paradox  in  this.  From  the  Positivist 
point  of  view,  the  current  Socialism  is  essentially  right 
in  idea,  so  far  as  it  goes  ;  but  it  is  limited  and  incom- 
plete. It  does  not  carry  the  idea  half  far  enough. 
The  Socialists  around  us  fill  the  air  with  denunciations 
of  the  cruelty  of  Capital,  of  the  disinherited  state  of 
the  labourer,  of  the  miserable  pittance  which  his 
severest  labour  can  bring.  Most  true  !  and  heartily 
do  we  join  in  these  outcries.  But  it  is  not  enough. 
There  is  appalling  cruelty  in  men  and  women  who 
have  no  capital.  Many  a  parent,  many  a  child,  many 
a  neighbour,  make  life  a  burden  to  those  whom  they 
control  or  affect.  Those  who  possess  physical  strength 
often  cruelly  abuse  it ;  those  who  are  rich  only  in  the 


4.42     NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

love,  care,  and  consideration  which  are  lavished  on 
them,  cruelly  waste  these  precious  gifts.  Those  who 
have  any  form  of  power,  those  who  have  rare  gifts  of 
intellect,  learning,  or  peculiar  resources,  often  most 
selfishly  hoard  or  squander  their  store. 

The  poor  are  shamefully  excluded  from  the  laden 
tables  of  the  Commonwealth  j  but  they  are  excluded 
also  from  education,  from  knowledge,  from  art,  from 
cultivation,  from  a  thousand  things  which  those  who 
have  them  prefer  to  keep  to  themselves.  Selfishness, 
and  anti-social  misappropriation  of  the  common  store 
of  humanity,  are  not  things  confined  to  material 
products  ;  nor  will  any  re -arrangement  of  material 
products  extinguish  them.  The  institutions  and 
habits  that  cluster  round  our  Family  Life,  the 
appliances  of  civilised  life,  the  common  knowledge  of 
our  generation,  the  arts,  the  sciences,  the  manners 
and  courtesies  of  life  —  are  equally  the  product  of 
Society,  as  much  as  are  factories  or  railways,  and  they 
are  often  most  selfishly  abused  or  personally  mis- 
appropriated to  the  interest  of  particular  individuals. 
The  cry  of  the  Socialist,  that  the  material  things 
produced  by  all  should  not  be  appropriated  by  the 
few^  is  most  true.  But  it  is  only  a  part  of  the 
truth. 

All  that  Socialists  urge  of  the  injustice  of  the 
social  arrangements  whereby,  when  the  owner  of  a 
coal-mine  sets  a  thousand  men  to  dig  in  the  pit,  at 
the  end  of  twenty  years  he  has  amassed  a  great  fortune 
whilst  the  thousand  men  have  nothing  but  their  worn- 
out  bodies  and  limbs — all  this  is  unanswerable  ;  it  is 
unjust,  and  indeed  intolerable.  We  are  wholly  with 
them  when  they  cry  that,  come  what  may,  it  must, 
and  shall  be  changed  to  a  more  humane  arrangement 
of  Society.  But  the  Socialist  puts  it  on  far  too 
narrow  a  ground  when  he  makes  the  claim  of  the 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  SOCIALISM   443 

pitmen  entirely  rest  on  right.  It  is  a  confused,  dis- 
credited, and  illusory  basis  is  that  of  right.  Legal 
right  we  know :  which  means  simply  what  the 
dominant  body  in  each  State  which  controls  its 
legislation,  chooses  from  time  to  time  to  enact.  And 
we  krow  what  under  democratic  suffrages  legal  rights 
are  now  in  England,  or  in  France,  or  in  America, 
democratic  republics  as  they  too  are.  But  right, 
apart  from  law,  is  a  mere  quicksand,  torn  to  pieces 
by  scores  of  clear  reasoners,  a  mere  rag  of  the  silly 
Rousseauism  of  the  last  century. 

The  lecturer  at  the  street-corner  appeals  to  right, 
by  which  he  means  what  he  would  like  to  see  done. 
But  trained  minds  know  too  well  that  right  is  a  mere 
phrase  to  juggle  with,  without  a  shadow  of  sound 
philosophic  basis,  indeed  without  a  trace  of  consistent 
meaning.  If  Stradivarius  makes  a  violin ;  and 
Beethoven  composes  a  sonata ;  and  Joachim  plays 
it  on  the  instrument  —  what  are  the  rights  of 
Stradivarius,  Beethoven,  and  Joachim  respectively  in 
the  money  which  people  pay  to  hear  the  performance  ? 
Every  one,  from  a  musician  to  a  doorkeeper,  would 
differ  as  to  the  shares  of  the  three.  And  who  could 
answer  so  ridiculous  a  question — except  by  saying 
that  the  rights  of  the  instrument-maker,  the  composer, 
and  the  player  were  what  each  might  agree  to  allow 
to  the  others  ?  Just  so  !  rights  are  an  absolutely 
insoluble  dilemma,  except  on  the  basis  of  free  contract. 
And  free  contract  is  just  the  system  which  the  pluto- 
nomists  now  vaunt  as  the  eternally  fair  system,  the 
system  under  which  in  England,  in  Scotland,  in  Ireland 
to-day,  all  the  cruelty  and  oppression  is  done.  In 
other  words,  to  appeal  to  right  is  either  to  appeal  to 
law  as  it  is,  or  else  to  appeal  to  the  same  legerdemain 
of  phrases,  under  which  the  most  savage  oppression  by 
Capital  is  worked  on  the  present  system. 


444    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

The  relations  of  man  to  man  in  a  highly  developed 
society  are  infinitely  complex,  and  elude  everything 
but  a  sound,  searching,  and  scientific  philosophy  of 
human  nature  and  of  the  social  organism.  And  do 
the  Socialists  of  whom  we  hear  most  pretend  that  they 
have  any  such  philosophy  worthy  of  the  name  ?  The 
Socialism  which  we  preach  here  does  rest  on  such  a 
philosophy,  based  on  universal  history,  on  a  study  of 
the  human  character,  and  an  exhaustive  survey  of  all 
the  faculties  and  the  wants  of  the  human  body  and 
the  human  soul.  Here  we  rest  the  claim  of  the 
labourer  to  a  full  share — not  merely  in  that  which  his 
hands  have  made — but  in  all  things  which  his  neigh- 
bours and  fellow-citizens  have — their  knowledge,  their 
thought,  their  skill,  their  refinement,  their  wisdom 
and  strength,  —  on  the  indefeasible  duty  of  all  to 
co-operate  in  the  great  social  combination  from  which 
all  they  have  is  ultimately  derived  and  to  which  they 
owe  every  faculty  of  their  nature. 

There  was  a  memorable  saying  of  the  last  genera- 
tion :  Property  has  its  duties  as  well  as  its  rights. 
But  our  view  of  Property  is  this :  The  rights  of 
Property  mean  a  concentration  of  social  duties.  Our 
Socialism  rests  on  Duty  not  on  Right.  Duty  is 
always  plain  j  Right  is  a  verbal  mystification.  A 
man  can  always  and  everywhere  do  his  duty.  He 
seldom  can  get  his  supposed  rights  without  trampling 
on  the  rights  of  others.  Men  wrangle  incessantly  as 
to  rights.  They  easily  agree  as  to  duties.  The 
performance  of  duty  is  always  an  ennobling,  a  moral, 
a  religious  act.  The  struggle  for  rights  calls  out  all 
the  passions  of  self  and  of  combat.  The  curse  of 
humanity  is  selfishness,  the  interests,  the  lusts,  the 
pride  of  self.  And  we  are  now  told  to  find  the 
blessing  of  humanity  in  constant  struggle  for  rights — 
which  can  mean  nothing  but  a  deeper  absorption  in  self. 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  SOCIALISM   445 

Unhappily  in  the  current  language  of  Socialists  we 
too  often  miss  two  important  elements  which  enter 
into  all  products,  material  or  intellectual,  but  which 
are  usually  completely  left  aside.  These  are  first : 
the  enormous  part  played  in  every  product  by  the 
society  itself  in  which  it  is  produced,  the  past  workers, 
thinkers,  and  managers,  and  the  social  organism  at 
present,  which  alone  enables  us  to  produce  at  all.  An 
ocean  steamship  could  not  be  built  on  the  Victoria 
Nyanza  nor  could  factories  be  established  on  the 
banks  of  the  Aruwhimi.  No  one  in  these  discussions 
as  to  "  Rights  of  Labour  "  seems  to  allow  a  penny  for 
government,  civil  population,  industrial  habits,  inherited 
aptitudes,  stored  materials,  mechanical  inventions,  and 
the  thousand  and  one  traditions  of  the  past  and  appli- 
ances of  civil  organisation,  without  which  no  complex 
thing  could  be  produced  at  all.  And  they  entirely 
leave  out  of  sight  posterity.  That  is  to  say,  Socialist 
reasoners  are  apt  to  leave  out  of  account  Society 
altogether.  And  Society,  that  is  the  Social  Organism 
in  the  Past  plus  the  Social  Organism  of  the  moment, 
is  something  entirely  distinct  from  the  particular 
workmen  of  a  given  factory  or  pit,  and  indeed  has 
interests  and  claims  quite  opposed  to  theirs.  Society, 
which  Socialists  ought  to  be  the  very  last  to  forget, 
is  the  indispensable  antecedent,  and  very  largely  the 
creator,  of  every  product. 

A  second  element  in  production  which  is  left  out 
of  sight  is  the  material,  plant,  and  capital  employed  in 
the  product,  the  organisation  of  the  entire  business, 
and  the  mental  creation  of  the  common  work.  We 
often  hear  capital  and  plant  spoken  of  as  if  they  grew 
in  the  fields,  or  fell  down  from  the  sky,  or  as  if  they 
were  mere  bits  of  luxury,  like  a  park  or  a  yacht, 
which  rich  men  were  bound  to  lend  to  poor  men  who 
want  them.  But  who  made  capital,  or  plant,  or 


446   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

factories,  or  yards,  and  docks,  ships,  and  engines,  but 
other  working  men  who  have  to  live  out  of  their 
labour,  and  who  cannot  transfer  the  results  of  their 
labours  without  securing  their  own  livelihood  ? 
Socialists  talk  as  if  the  yarn  spun  in  a  cotton  mill  was 
entirely  produced  by  the  labour  of  the  spinners  ;  and 
they  say  the  mill  and  the  machinery  ought  to  belong 
to  the  State.  But  the  mill  and  the  machinery  are  the 
result  of  the  labour  of  many  more  men  than  the 
spinners,  working  many  years.  The  capitalist  (so 
called)  is  simply  the  man  who  has  advanced  them  their 
means  of  living  all  this  time.  Suppose  the  vampire 
capitalist  suppressed.  How  is  the  State  going  to 
support  the  builders  and  engineers  and  pitmen,  who 
build  the  mill  and  forge  the  machinery  and  dig  the 
coal,  except  by  taking  half  the  wages  from  the  spinners 
as  taxes  ?  This  seems  an  odd  device  for  increasing 
the  wages  of  the  workmen. 

Again.  Who  made  the  cotton-spinning  business  ? 
Who  created  the  complex  trade  relations  without 
which  the  mill  would  stand  idle  for  want  of  orders  ? 
Who  calculates  quantities,  profits,  prices,  rise  and  fall 
of  markets,  and  the  intricate  and  delicate  organisation 
of  a  paying  concern  ?  Who  but  the  mill-owner  or 
his  predecessor  in  title,  and  one  or  two  skilled  experts 
trained  from  childhood  to  this  very  difficult  work. 
Socialist  lecturers  sometimes  say,  "Of  course,  the 
rights  of  management  will  be  guaranteed."  But  this 
is  a  very  off-hand  way  of  shunting  the  question.  The 
mills  which  cover  the  bare  hillsides  and  glens  of 
Lancashire  and  Yorkshire,  the  docks  of  Liverpool,  or 
of  London,  the  pits  of  Durham  and  Northumberland 
did  not  grow,  and  sink  themselves.  They  were  as 
completely  created  by  the  genius  and  resolution  of 
particular  men  as  the  locomotive  was  invented  by 
Stephenson  or  the  art  of  printing  by  Gutenberg. 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  SOCIALISM    447 

Management  indeed  !  That  is  a  ridiculously  easy 
way  of  putting  it.  You  cannot  hire  a  manager  for 
these  things.  A  great  business  needs  its  general  as 
completely  as  an  army.  The  battle  of  Waterloo 
would  never  have  been  won  without  Wellington. 
Nor  would  St.  Petersburg  have  existed  without  Peter 
the  Great,  nor  Berlin  without  Frederick.  Imagine 
Prussians  or  Russians  hiring  a  manager  to  create  their 
nation  or  found  their  capital. 

In  all  these  discussions  men  too  often  forget 
altogether  the  indispensable  part  of  the  organising 
mind — without  which  most  undertakings  would  never 
exist  at  all,  or  would  be  doomed  to  failure.  The 
continual  disasters,  and  at  best  the  very  trifling  success 
of  those  undertakings  which  in  the  last  thirty  years 
have  been  started  and  carried  on  by  the  workmen 
themselves,  form  the  best  evidence  of  this.  And  the 
one  or  two  cases  in  which  a  perceptible  profit  has 
been  made  are  those  in  which  the  market  already 
existed,  and  the  whole  conditions  of  the  trade  were 
simple  and  notorious.  There  is  no  case  on  record  of 
a  body  of  workmen  creating  a  new  market,  or  founding 
an  original  enterprise. 

Still  more  completely  forgotten  is  the  moralising 
power  of  capital  when  it  is  directed  under  real  social 
impulses  and  in  a  spirit  of  genuine  social  obligation. 
The  best  and  most  useful  qualities  called  out  in  human 
nature  are  incapable  of  acting  without  freedom  in  the 
disposal  of  material  power  in  some  form,  and  some 
kind  of  authorised  appropriation  of  material  things  : — 
limited  and  modified  it  may  be,  but  not  entirely  sup- 
pressed. The  domestic  life  of  the  simplest  family 
would  be  impossible,  if  they  had  not  even  a  room  they 
could  call  their  home,  not  a  bit  of  furniture,  not  a 
picture,  or  a  book,  not  a  chair,  nor  a  bed,  which  they 
could  reasonably  expect  to  occupy  the  next  day.  No 


448  NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

man  could  feel  himself  a  free  and  independent  citizen 
if  he  could  not  call  his  boots,  or  his  shirt,  or  his  hat 
his  own  ;  no  man  could  work  at  his  best,  if  he  could 
not  look  to  keeping  the  same  set  of  tools  in  his  own 
bag. 

If  room,  bed,  plates,  cups,  knives  and  forks,  clothes, 
tools,  books,  and  every  material  thing  were  served  out 
to  citizen  No.  7695,  every  morning  from  the  public 
stores,  men  would  feel  themselves  in  a  prison  or  a 
barrack,  and  the  noblest  and  most  powerful  qualities 
of  citizenship  would  be  destroyed.  If  no  man  could 
look  to  reap  the  corn  which  he  had  sown,  or  to  plough 
next  year  the  same  field  which  he  farmed  last  year,  no 
practical  farming  could  be  done  at  all,  and  the  farmer 
would  feel  himself  to  be  a  slave  or  a  convict.  What 
is  it  that  forces  all  reasonable  Socialists  to-day  to 
accept  appropriation  for  all  such  domestic  and  personal 
concerns,  though  obviously  on  the  strict  theory  of 
Socialist  right  a  man  has  no  more  right  to  a  bed,  or  a 
cot  which  he  did  not  make,  but  bought  in  the  market, 
than  a  capitalist  has  to  a  mill,  or  a  ship,  which  he 
bought  and  did  not  make  ?  On  the  abstract  theory 
of  rights,  that  things  only  belong  to  those  who  make 
them,  a  man's  coat  belongs  not  to  him,  but  to  the 
farmer  who  grew  the  wool,  and  the  weaver  who  made 
the  stuff,  and  the  tailor  who  cut  it  out  and  sewed  it 
together.  We  know  that  no  reasonable  Socialist 
pushes  abstract  theory  so  far.  That  is  to  say,  reason- 
able Socialists  surrender  the  doctrine  of  rights^  for  the 
sake  of  social  convenience  and  by  mere  force  of 
human  nature. 

It  is  a  question  of  degree  where  the  line  of  appro- 
priation is  to  be  drawn.  Every  one  agrees  that,  if 
all  kinds  of  appropriation  of  capital  were  absolutely 
barred  .by  law,  society  would  soon  revert  to  a  state  of 
primitive  barbarism.  We  can  all  see  that  appropria- 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  SOCIALISM    449 

tion  of  home,  of  domestic  appliances,  of  clothes,  books, 
tools,  of  farms,  workshops  and  the  like,  is  indispensable 
to  the  best  activity  of  human  life.  Most  Socialists 
would  add  some  stock  of  money  or  money's  worth, 
for  few  would  be  ready  to  face  so  complete  a  barrack 
system,  that  a  man  would  have  to  apply  to  the  board 
for  an  order,  if  he  wished  to  change  his  house,  or  take 
his  family  for  a  holiday.  Here,  we  are  prepared  to 
carry  the  principle  further,  and  say  : — that  limited 
and  qualified  appropriation  of  farms,  of  mills,  of 
factories,  of  ships  and  the  material  instruments  of 
production  is  not  only  indispensable  to  anything  like 
adequate  production,  but  is  alone  the  means  of  calling 
out  the  exercise  of  the  finest  forces  of  human  nature, 
of  activities  without  which  'life  would  be  mean  and 
dull  indeed. 

In  the  shameful  misuse  of  Capital  which  is  so 
common  around  us,  and  in  the  cynical  selfishness  with 
which  the  rights  of  Capital  are  usually  asserted,  we 
hear  nowadays  incessant  outcries  about  the  crimes  of 
Capital,  and  next  to  nothing  about  the  indispensable 
services  of  Capital  to  Society.  The  outcry  is  indeed 
abundantly  justified.  But  the  services  which  Capital 
renders  to  Society  are  quite  as  real  and  quite  as  far- 
reaching  ;  though  Capitalists  themselves  are  usually 
too  blind  or  too  arrogant  to  assert  them,  and  though, 
in  the  obsequious  deference  that  we  now  show  to  the 
popular  cry  of  the  hour,  few  social  reformers  will 
venture  to  murmur  a  good  word  for  the  social  utility 
of  Capital  in  principle.  Indeed,  unless  Capital  can 
show  itself  in  a  more  social  attitude,  or  unless  social 
philosophy  can  prove  its  necessity  on  better  grounds 
than  those  of  the  obsolete  laws  of  Plutonomy,  it  is  far 
from  impossible  that  the  institution  itself  may  be 
shaken  to  its  foundations,  and  suffer  a  temporary 
dissolution.  If  it  cannot  reform  itself  in  time,  that  is 

2  G 


450    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

perhaps  the  only  thing  that  could  happen.  The 
institution  will  of  course  reconstruct  itself  rapidly 
again,  and  it  may  be  hoped  on  broader  foundations 
and  with  a  nobler  spirit.  But  in  the  interval,  frightful 
disasters  would  be  the  portion  of  our  complex  industrial 
system  ;  widespread  misery  to  the  point  of  starvation 
would  befall  our  people  ;  and  a  staggering  blow  would 
be  delivered  to  the  intellectual,  material,  and  moral 
progress  of  civilisation. 

Capitalists  themselves  are  usually  unconscious  of 
the  immense  benefits  which  they  really  confer  on 
society,  whilst  they  imagine  themselves  to  be  exerting 
nothing  but  thrift,  prudence,  and  honourable  ambition. 
Without  the  energy  and  ability  which  only  can  secure 
industrial  success,  the  undertakings  they  direct  would 
be  disastrous  failures,  and  workmen  would  everywhere 
be  thrown  out  of  employment.  Without  the  passion 
for  accumulation  which  makes  a  capitalist  what  he  is, 
products  would  be  consumed  as  fast  as  they  were 
made,  and  no  accumulation  would  exist.  Without 
accumulation,  society  would  come  to  a  standstill,  and 
at  the  first  turn  of  bad  times  or  a  succession  of  bad 
seasons,  the  people  would  everywhere  be  deprived  of 
the  means  of  living.  We  hear  much  about  the 
immense  profits  which  Capitalists  make  ;  but  no  one 
ever  speaks  of  the  enormous  drains  on  capital  which 
in  bad  times  they  bear  in  silence. 

The  working  masses  know  nothing  about  these 
huge,  prolonged,  and  alarming  losses,  which  the 
capitalist  himself  is  too  prudent  to  disclose  to  any  one 
but  his  lawyer  and  his  banker.  He  struggles  on  with 
courage  and  tenacity,  as  if  he  were  making  a  profit ; 
and  often  as  not,  he  saves  the  ship  at  last.  In  the 
meantime  his  workmen  are  being  paid,  sometimes  year 
after  year,  out  of  the  accumulated  savings,  just  as  if 
the  business  were  still  running  at  a  profit.  If  there 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  SOCIALISM   451 

were  no  capitalist,  and  the  concern  were  managed  by 
public  meetings  of  those  who  work  in  it,  the  following 
results  would  arise  (i)  The  profits  in  good  years  would 
be  consumed  as  they  were  made,  and  no  accumulation 
to  speak  of  would  be  formed  ;  (2)  the  instability  of 
management  by  meeting  would  lead  to  speedy  ruin  ; 
(3)  the  publicity  involved  in  public  management  would 
be  destructive  to  business ;  (4)  in  bad  years,  the 
workers  in  meeting  assembled  would  never  submit  to 
the  reduction  in  salaries  required  to  meet  losses,  and 
would  never  have  the  tenacity  to  face  a  long  succession 
of  losses  and  reduction  :  a  panic  would  arise,  and  the 
business  would  be  broken  up. 

If  the  "  business  "  were  the  property  of  the  State, 
and  if  the  management  were  that  of  a  Government 
department,  what  is  there  to  show  that  it  would  be 
managed  more  liberally  than  the  Dockyards,  Govern- 
ment factories,  or  the  Post  Office,  in  all  of  which  we 
hear  the  loudest  outcries  of  tyranny,  which  are  often 
said  to  be  types  of  Public  Sweating  ?  Socialism 
involves,  in  order  to  give  it  a  fair  chance,  an  entire 
reconstruction  of  our  whole  social  system  and  all  our 
principles  of  public  life.  Quite  so.  That  is  our 
point.  Socialism  offers  no  such  fundamental  social 
regeneration.  Positivism  does.  And  by  the  time 
the  social  reconstruction  is  effected,  it  will  be  found 
that  anti-Capitalist  Socialism  is  no  longer  needed. 

Capital  acts  as  a  reservoir  does,  which  in  seasons 
of  drought  keeps  a  city  supplied  with  water  till  the 
streams  begin  again  to  flow.  It  is  created  by  the 
peculiar  aptitude  for  management  shown  by  a  few 
individuals  having  a  genius  for  that  kind  of  work.  It 
is  maintained  by  the  passion  for  accumulation  urging 
special  natures  to  submit  to  great  efforts  and  to  resist 
immediate  temptations.  But  this  genius  for  business, 
this  instinct  of  accumulation,  and  this  dogged  tenacity 


452   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  purpose  are  comparatively  rare.  Ninety-nine  in 
every  hundred  have  not  got  these  qualities,  or  have 
not  got  them  in  special  degree  and  in  due  combination. 
The  hundredth  man  is  a  born  capitalist,  or  manager  of 
capital ;  and,  as  surely  as  a  born  painter  will  paint 
and  a  born  singer  will  sing,  he  will  accumulate  and 
maintain  the  accumulations,  if  you  offer  him  the 
chance  and  give  him  a  free  hand.  But  to  suppose 
that  you  can  hire  him  to  do  this  work  at  so  much  a 
week,  or  for  board,  lodging,  and  clothing,  without 
pocket-money  or  luxuries  of  any  kind,  is  a  foolish  and 
ignorant  assumption.  Nor  is  it  less  foolish  to  suppose 
that  he  will  do  his  work  as  well,  if  you  do  not  give  him 
a  free  hand  at  all,  but  have  him  up  before  the  "  Board  " 
or  the  shareholders,  and  give  him  his  orders  week  by 
week,  as  if  he  were  merely  your  managing  clerk. 

It  is  commonly  said  that  the  example  of  Railways, 
Banks,  and  other  Joint-Stock  concerns  proves  that  it 
is  quite  possible  to  carry  on  vast  business  affairs  on  the 
collective  principle,  with  elected  managers  and  hired 
agents.  There  cannot  be  a  more  transparent  sophism. 
These  joint -stock  concerns  are  not  carried  on  or 
managed  by  those  whom  they  employ,  and  to  whom 
they  pay  weekly  wages.  The  directors  are  not  work- 
men ;  they  have  no  interests  other  than  those  of  the 
shareholders ;  both  directors  and  shareholders  all 
belong  to  the  capitalist  class,  not  to  the  labouring 
class.  The  whole  of  the  shareholders,  without  excep- 
tion, belong  to  the  few  who  have  capital,  and  whose 
habits  are  all  those  of  the  capitalist  order.  They 
were  all  bred  more  or  less  to  business.  And  they 
practically  trust  the  interests  of  the  concern  to  a  very 
few  selected  directors,  usually  men  of  great  wealth, 
who  are  also  professional  experts.  Not  a  single  person 
to  whom  the  Company  pays  wages,  has  a  voice  in  the 
management,  either  directly  or  indirectly.  And  the 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  SOCIALISM   453 

whole  concern  is  carried  on  by  a  few  picked  capitalists, 
in  whom  a  larger  group  of  capitalists  are  satisfied  to 
place  implicit  confidence.  The  consequence  is  that 
the  Bank  of  England,  a  Railway,  or  a  Steamship 
Company,  is  carried  on  exactly  in  the  same  way  as 
the  firm  of  Rothschild,  Cunard,  or  W.  Whiteley. 
What  is  the  analogy  between  the  management  of  a 
Joint-Stock  Company  by  a  selected  Board  of  Capitalists, 
and  the  management  of  a  Railway  by  its  own  drivers, 
stokers,  guards,  and  porters  ;  or  of  an  Ocean  Shipping 
line  by  its  own  seamen,  firemen,  shipwrights  and 
labourers  ?  There  is  no  analogy  at  all. 

The  Socialist  theory  implies  that  business  concerns 
are  to  be  carried  on  or  controlled  by  those  who  do 
the  manual  work,  not  by  men  specially  trained  to 
great  affairs.  Does  any  rational  man  imagine  that 
the  stokers  and  navvies  employed  on  a  Railway  are 
likely  to  keep  down  their  own  wages  in  order  to 
provide  funds  for  new  stock  five  years  hence  ;  that  a 
body  of  ten  thousand  men,  three-fourths  of  whom 
cannot  keep  half-a-crown  in  their  pockets,  are  going 
to  think  of  the  next  generation  ;  or  that  they  are 
likely  to  trust  the  "  Board "  in  the  way  in  which 
the  Chatham  and  Dover  shareholders  trust  Mr. 
J.  S.  Forbes  and  have  made  him  dictator  for  life  ? 

Working  men  accustomed  to  the  simple  operations 
of  their  own  particular  craft  are  prone  to  imagine  the 
conduct  of  a  business  to  be  an  easy  matter ;  and  when 
they  manage  a  co-operative  store  for  the  supply  of 
bacon,  flour,  and  jam,  they  are  told  by  some  silly 
friends  that  they  have  proved  their  fitness  to  direct 
masses  of  accumulated  capital.  It  is  a  pitiable  delusion. 
The  success  of  a  club  to  buy  food  for  the  members 
at  wholesale  prices  can  prove  nothing  of  the  kind. 
They  are  producing  nothing  for  the  public  market, 
nor  are  they  competing  with  individual  capitalists  at 


454   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

all.  The  direction  of  a  large  trading  or  manufacturing 
concern  requires  powers  of  will,  of  decision,  of  insight, 
of  intuition,  only  given  to  some  men  out  of  many, 
and  only  brought  to  perfection  by  the  training  of  a 
life.  The  qualities  required  in  a  successful  man  of 
business  are  somewhat  like  those  required  by  a  success- 
ful general  in  the  field.  And  it  would  be  as  idle  to 
expect  that  Armstrong's  Gun  Factory,  the  Great 
Western  Railway,  or  Cunard's  Packet  Line  could  be 
successfully  run  by  public  meetings  of  the  founders, 
stokers,  sailors,  or  labourers  they  employ,  as  it  would 
be  to  expect  that  Wellington's  campaigns  could  have 
been  won  by  councils  of  war  elected  by  universal 
suffrage  throughout  his  army. 

The  scheme  of  Socialism  implies  something  quite 
different  from  management  by  a  "Board."  A 
"  Board,"  such  as  we  know,  consists  of  capitalists, 
and  they  do  not  divide  profits  amongst  themselves. 
Unless  workmen  employed  at  daily  wages  are  to  have 
control  of  the  profits,  Socialism  can  mean  nothing. 
Its  proposal  is  to  put  the  distribution  of  the  profits 
into  the  control  of  the  manual  workers  alone.  What 
then  would  happen  ?  The  workers,  who  have  no 
formed  habits  of  accumulation  (for,  if  they  had,  they 
would  not  be  workmen),  would  divide  amongst  them- 
selves the  utmost  possible  farthing  of  profit.  The 
concern  would  be  left  without  due  reserves,  and 
the  growth  of  capital  would  be  arrested.  When 
Socialists  talk  of  the  "State,"  they  mean  nothing 
but  the  decisions,  from  day  to  day,  of  the  masses  of 
workmen  in  democratic  assemblies. 

The  gain  per  contra^  we  are  told,  would  be  that  the 
sums  now  personally  consumed  by  the  capitalist  would 
be  saved.  It  is  quite  true  that  many  capitalists — let 
us  say  most  capitalists — in  the  absence  of  any  real 
control,  social,  moral,  or  religious — do  now  selfishly 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  SOCIALISM    455 

and  shamelessly  consume  disproportioned  shares  of  the 
profits.  Their  reckless  egoism  may  yet  ruin  the  very 
institution  of  property  itself;  and  it  certainly  forms 
the  greatest  danger  by  which  property  is  threatened. 
But,  however  morally  evil  and  publicly  scandalous 
their  selfish  ostentation  may  be,  it  is  not  socially  so 
injurious  as  it  looks  at  first  sight.  Even  wanton 
luxury  in  personal  expenditure  by  a  large  employer 
of  industry  consumes  but  an  insignificant  part  of  the 
gross  returns  of  his  business ;  and  it  forms  often  but  a 
trifling  fraction  of  what  he  pays  in  weekly  wages. 
A  large  employer  consumes,  we  will  say,  ^5000  per 
annum,  when  he  pays  in  wages  at  least  ^100,000. 
If  the  whole  of  his  expenditure  were  devoted  to 
increase  wages,  they  would  only  be  raised  is.  in  the 
pound.  The  workman  who  receives  20s.  would  then 
receive  2 is.  And  as  things  now  stand,  we  know  too 
well  where  the  extra  shilling  would  go. 

Against  this  must  be  set  the  prospect  that,  on  the 
Socialist  theory,  not  one  man,  but  at  least  a  thousand, 
would  be  tempted  to  consume  the  profits  year  by  year 
"  up  to  the  hilt  "  ;  and  that,  it  must  be  allowed,  for  the 
best  of  all  reasons — to  provide  bread  for  their  children. 
As  a  body,  they  would  be  without  the  intense  passion 
for  accumulation  which  makes  a  man  a  capitalist,  and 
without  which  no  business  could  be  carried  on  long. 
The  world  sees  the  wanton  and  selfish  expenditure  of 
which  capitalists  are  too  often  proud.  But  it  sees 
nothing  of  the  silent  indefatigable  accumulation  which 
goes  on  alongside  of  the  waste.  Now  the  accumula- 
tion on  the  whole  is  far  more  extensive  and  of  more 
importance  than  the  waste.  It  is  very  often  made 
under  intensely  selfish  motives :  but  society  gains 
equally,  whatever  be  the  motives. 

Under  the  present  system  of  Capital,  accumulation 
is  secured,  be  it  well  or  ill,  and  usually  it  is  not  well. 


456    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

It  is  perhaps  true  that  the  accumulation  is  far  too 
rapid,  too  spasmodic,  and  often  ill  judged.  It  ought 
to  be  an  accumulation  far  more  regular,  more  cautious, 
and  more  open  to  general  social  aims.  But  it  is  secured. 
And  accumulation  is  the  condition  precedent  of  social 
wellbeing  and  of  civilisation  itself.  But,  under  the 
Socialist  scheme,  all  accumulation  would  be  left  to 
depend  on  the  votes  of  those  who,  ex  hypothesi^  have 
no  turn  for  accumulation  at  all,  who  under  the  pressure 
of  daily  needs  could  not  be  induced  to  provide  for  the 
future,  who  have  no  training  in  business,  and  who 
would  be  open  to  all  the  motives  which  are  wont  to 
play  upon  popular  impatience. 

Under  such  a  state  of  things,  we  may  look  forward 
to  an  industrial  chaos  and  material  collapse,  such  as 
Europe  has  not  seen  since  the  Early  Middle  Ages.  A 
stoppage  of  necessary  accumulation  would  mean  what 
the  absence  of  all  reservoirs  would  mean  in  a  season  of 
drought.  Production  would  everywhere  be  paralysed  ; 
business  would  cease  ;  and  consequently  wages  would 
not  be  paid.  It  is  difficult  to  see  how  famines  on  a 
gigantic  scale  could  be  averted.  For,  even  if  the 
property  of  the  rich  were  confiscated  and  divided,  it 
would  not  feed  millions  of  workmen.  The  parks, 
mansions,  furniture,  hot-houses,  gardens,  horses,  and 
carriages  of  the  capitalists  would  neither  feed  nor 
clothe  the  poor ;  and  in  the  midst  of  a  universal 
material  crash,  they  would  be  neither  useful  nor 
saleable.  At  present,  our  thirty  millions  of  people 
buy  food  from  abroad  with  the  cotton,  iron,  coal, 
ships,  woollens,  and  so  forth  which  they  make  or 
raise.  They  cannot  make  cotton,  iron,  ships,  and 
so  forth  as  men  can  dig  up  potatoes,  nor  without 
enormous  accumulated  funds  to  provide  them  with 
costly  machinery,  and  to  pay  the  wages  during  the 
long  interval  that  must  elapse  between  digging  up 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  SOCIALISM    457 

the  coal  in  the  pit  and  the  receipt  of  payment  from  the 
foreigner  for  the  manufactured  iron.  And  if  the  work- 
men, in  deference  to  a  specious  theory,  choose  to  destroy 
the  very  sources  of  accumulation,  the  inevitable  result 
must  be — a  prolonged  era  of  starvation,  quite  appalling 
in  its  severity  and  in  its  extent. 

There  remains  all  the  wide  field  of  the  intolerable 
personal  tyranny  which  any  scheme  of  Socialism  in- 
evitably involves.  We  hear  little  now  on  this  side  of 
the  question  ;  because  the  elaborate  codes  for  the  regu- 
lation of  human  life,  so  common  in  the  early  years  of 
the  century,  have  long  become  obsolete  and  forgotten. 
The  despotism  of  Socialism  does  not  so  much  alarm 
people  now,  simply  because  Socialism  now  is  presented 
in  a  thoroughly  vague  and  inorganic  form.  If,  as 
was  said  half  in  jest  and  half  in  earnest,  "  we  are  all 
Socialists  now,"  it  is  also  true  that  Socialism  now 
means  anything  or  everything.  Many  people  fancy 
they  are  Socialists  when  they  only  desire  to  see  some 
well-meant  Bills  for  the  protection  of  workmen  passed 
by  Parliament.  Legislation  about  hours  of  labour,  the 
State  purchase  of  railways  and  docks,  model  farms  and 
lodgings  maintained  by  taxes,  and  the  like — all  this  is 
a  mere  playing  at  Socialism.  I  read  through  that 
aesthetic  but  hazy  work  called  Fabian  Essays^  without 
finding  more  than  half-a-dozen  really  Socialist  pro- 
posals, or  more  than  one  real  Socialist  writer. 

But  if  Socialism  is  to  reorganise  Industry,  it  must 
mean  the  systematic,  stern,  and  universal  suppression 
of  private  capital  and  wealth  by  law.  There  is  one 
eccentric  apostle  of  this  creed,  who  seems  to  combine 
with  it  the  suppression  of  the  Family,  and  of  most 
other  institutions  of  civilised  man.  If  Socialism  is 
really  to  regenerate  industry,  it  must  abolish  capital, 
wages,  property  in  all  forms,  and  it  can  only  do  so  by 
law.  The  serious  Socialists,  of  times  when  Socialism 


was  not  an  aesthetic  fad,  but  a  Social  Gospel  of  con- 
suming passion,  all  devised  elaborate  schemes  for 
forcing  men's  lives  into  cast-iron  formulas,  in  order 
to  keep  capital  in  the  state  of  a  proscribed  and  illegal 
institution.  They  were  quite  right.  Unless  capital 
be  sternly  and  universally  suppressed  by  law,  unless 
the  family  life,  the  personal  life,  the  social  life  of  all 
citizens  equally  be  prescribed  by  law,  as  Lycurgus, 
Baboeuf,  Fourier,  and  Owen  projected  it,  Capital  will 
maintain  itself  and  make  Socialism  a  mere  impracti- 
cable experiment.  If  there  is  to  be  Socialism  at  all, 
serious  enough  to  recast  the  conditions  of  labour,  it 
must  be  an  inexorable  scheme  of  legal  compulsion  : 
affecting  us  all  in  our  homes,  in  our  social  habits,  and 
in  the  entire  disposal  of  our  personal  life. 

What  an  appalling  prospect  of  tyranny  does  this 
open  to  the  vision  F  The  development  of  man's 
individual  capacities,  the  moral  beauty  of  domestic 
life,  the  progress  of  science,  of  art,  of  learning,  of 
religion — all  depend  on  a  due  measure  of  individual 
freedom.  But  individual  freedom  is  absolutely  de- 
pendent on  the  free  command  of  a  certain  amount  of 
individual  capital.  A  man  can  now  devote  himselr 
to  a  long  career  of  unremunerative  study,  by  reason 
that  he  or  his  parents  may  have  accumulated  enough 
to  maintain  him  in  comfort.  An  artist  can  work  out 
ideas  which  the  public  has  not  learned  to  value,  by 
reason  that  a  few  rich  men  give  him  a  fancy  price  for 
pieces  that  they  like.  A  man  can  devote  himself  to 
politics,  to  education,  to  religious,  social,  or  moral 
reformation,  because  he  has  just  enough  income  to 
dispense  with  daily  toil  at  a  trade.  The  whole  pro- 
gress of  civilisation  lies  there : — inventions,  learning, 
art,  poetry,  philosophy,  reformation. 

Suppress  capital  and  place  all  accumulations  not  at 
the  free  disposal  of  individuals,  but  at  the  mercy  of 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  SOCIALISM   459 

meetings  or  boards  of  labourers,  and  what  chance 
would  there  be  of  a  student,  a  poet,  or  a  moralist 
obtaining  an  order  for  free  living  ?  Let  us  imagine 
Charles  Darwin,  Alfred  Tennyson,  Burne-Jones,  or 
Thomas  Carlyle  appearing  before  the  department  of 
education  to  ask  for  a  dispensation  from  labour,  in 
order  to  devote  themselves  to  biology,  poetry,  painting, 
or  letters  !  They  would  be  driven  out  of  the  Board- 
room as  idle  malingerers.  It  is  sometimes  suggested 
that  the  student,  the  artist,  or  the  teacher  would  be 
duly  supported  by  the  public  appreciation  of  their 
merits  ;  so  that  a  popular  painter  or  writer  would 
immediately  receive  a  state  pension.  That  is  to 
say,  that  art,  science,  literature,  and  education  would 
pass  into  the  hands  of  those  who  best  could  hit  the 
passing  fancy  of  the  untrained  public  of  the  day. 

It  is  quite  needless  to  enlarge  on  the  myriad  forms 
of  tyranny  which  true  Socialism  implies,  because 
Socialism  now  presents  itself  only  in  a  disguise  which 
might  serve  as  a  costume  for  a  Court  Ball.  Our 
attention  is  not  called  to  the  despotism  of  life  that  true 
Socialism  involves,  simply  because  there  is  now  hardly 
ariy  true  Socialism  before  us.  But  it  is  not  the  less 
true  that  Property,  or  personal  appropriation  of  Capital, 
is  the  sole  condition  of  personal  freedom.  It  is  quite 
true  that  the  freedom  is  now  brutally  and  cynically 
abused  by  the  Capitalist,  but  it  remains  true  all  the  same, 
and  is  an  eternal  axiom  of  human  society : — without 
personal  appropriation  there  can  be  no  personal  freedom. 

It  must  also  be  remembered  that,  in  the  scheme 
of  Socialism,  the  humblest  workman  would  feel  the 
despotism  of  the  State  quite  as  much  as  the  great 
capitalist  whom  he  is  to  depose.  The  poorest  work- 
man to-day  has  a  certain  amount  of  freedom  before 
him,  when  he  has  got  his  week's  wages  in  his  pocket. 
But  under  a  strict  system  of  Socialism,  he  would  not 


460    NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

be  free  to  change  his  home,  or  his  residence,  or  his 
trade,  or  dispose  of  his  children,  as  he  chose.  The 
simplest  detail  of  his  life  would  have  to  be  fixed  by 
order  of  some  Board.  Why  ?  Because  a  man  can 
do  nothing  freely  without  some  sort  of  accumulation. 
And,  if  you  suppress  all  accumulation,  you  render  a 
man  as  helpless  as  a  slave.  If  you  suppress  accumula- 
tion on  principle  you  must  suppress  all  accumulation 
— even  ^5  in  a  workman's  pocket. 

Thus,  then,  we  come  to  the  conviction  that 
Property,  like  Family,  like  Government,  like  the 
separation  of  professions  and  functions,  is  a  permanent, 
essential,  indispensable  element  in  all  civilised  societies. 
It  has  been  cruelly  perverted  and  abused  ;  it  has  worked 
an  enormous  amount  of  evil  j  it  has  aroused  a  great 
force  of  just  indignation  by  its  misdoings.  The  real 
answer  is  not  its  annihilation ;  but  its  reformation :  its 
complete  regeneration  by  moral  and  religious,  and  not  by 
mechanical  and  legal  agencies.  Governments  also  have 
frightfully  abused  their  powers.  But  only  Anarchists 
ask  us  to  abolish  government,  rather  than  to  control 
it.  The  problem  of  the  future  is  to  change  the  mode 
in  which  capital  shall  be  used,  not  the  persons  by 
whom  capital  shall  be  held.  Appropriation,  in  truth, 
is  the  condition  antecedent  of  all  civilisation. 

Limited  and  qualified  appropriation,  I  say.  For 
we  entirely  agree  that  the  unlimited  and  unqualified 
appropriation  which  now  passes  current  as  property  in 
Capital,  is  an  anti-social,  inhuman,  and  barbarous  form 
of  tyranny.  Limited  by  whom  ?  Qualified  by  what  ? 
Limited  by  the  whole  force  of  public  opinion,  by  law, 
and  by  the  voice  of  the  commonwealth  expressed  in  a 
thousand  modes  !  Qualified  by  religion,  and  a  really 
social  education,  by  the  rise  of  a  new  morality,  and 
by  a  set  of  social  institutions  which  will  impress  on 
the  conscience  the  paramount  sense  of  duty  from  the 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  SOCIALISM  461 

cradle  to  the  grave.  These  modes  of  economic 
reform,  these  types  of  Socialism,  offer  no  new  re- 
sources from  religion — no  education,  no  moral  scheme, 
no  social  institutions  whatever.  They  rely  exclusively 
on  bare  redistribution  in  the  material  things,  on  a 
simple  re-adjustment  in  the  right  to  capital.  The 
real  evils  are  moral,  social,  religious,  and  only  partly 
material.  The  deeper  source  of  the  suffering,  cruelty, 
and  oppression  about  us  lies  in  human  selfishness — 
selfishness  which  takes  as  many  forms  as  Proteus, 
which  is  as  subtle  as  the  serpent  that  beguiled  our 
first  parents ;  and  which  is  able  to  elude  a  thousand 
laws.  How  are  we  going  to  cure  or  mend  human 
selfishness  ?  For  if  we  leave  this  rampant,  new  laws, 
and  bare  material  reforms,  and  the  shifting  the  limits  of 
appropriation,  can  have  but  a  passing  or  doubtful  result. 
Our  answer  is  plain.  We  believe  that  selfishness 
can  be  cured  only  by  Religion — by  a  social  religion, 
the  aim  of  which  is  not  to  land  the  believer  in  Heaven 
but  to  reform  human  nature  upon  earth.  Religion 
has  never  fairly  set  itself  to  that  direct  object,  though 
incidentally  it  has  done  much  to  promote  it,  often 
without  intending  it,  and  sometimes  in  spite  of  its 
own  dogmatic  precepts.  Once  make  religion  the 
dominant  force  in  human  life,  make  the  sole  business 
of  religion  to  moralise  men,  to  control  self-interest 
and  to  purify  society,  and  we  shall  have  a  power  equal 
to  cope  with  all  extant  forms  of  human  selfishness. 
Those  who  mock  at  our  hopes  that  this,  after  all,  is 
the  only  remedy  against  social  oppression,  have  but 
little  true  sense  of  the  enormous  power  of  a  really 
social  religion.  Even  in  its  forms  of  fictitious  abstrac- 
tion and  celestial  dreams,  Religion  has  been  strong 
enough  to  conquer  some  of  the  deepest  vices  of  our 
imperfect  nature,  and  to  stimulate  the  development  of 
the  sublimest  virtues. 


462   NATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

If  the  tribal  God  of  Israel,  or  the  mythology  of 
Greece  and  Rome,  could  call  out  such  great  qualities 
in  the  Hebrew,  the  Greek,  the  Roman  race  ;  if  the 
passion  for  godliness  in  Paul  and  his  companions  could 
overcome  the  lust  and  frivolity  of  the  ancient  world  ; 
if  the  Catholic  discipline  at  its  best  could  so  deeply 
transform  the  ferocity  and  turbulence  of  mediaeval 
Europe,  we  need  not  doubt  the  power  of  a  truly 
social  Religion  to  subdue  the,  certainly  less  desperate, 
evils  of  modern  industrial  life.  Human  nature  and 
society  both  have  a  subtle  and  complex  unity,  and  are 
only  to  be  radically  regenerated  by  a  complete  treatment 
of  their  needs  as  wide  as  human  nature  and  society 
themselves.  We  must  regenerate  domestic  life,  per- 
sonal life,  moral  life,  social  life,'  political  life,  religious 
life,  and  not  manufacturing  and  trading  life  alone. 

We  need  a  reformed  education,  resting  on  a 
scientific  philosophy,  revised  and  purified  domestic 
manners,  a  new  series  of  social  institutions,  a  reformed 
and  new  commonwealth.  But  above  all  we  need  a 
reformed  Religion — social  in  its  origin,  in  its  object, 
and  in  its  methods ;  human,  practical,  and  scientifically 
true.  The  religion  of  Humanity  affords  us  all  this, 
and  will  prove  equal  to  the  mighty  task  of  regener- 
ating even  our  corrupt  industrial  system,  for  it  will 
have  a  double  aspect  :  the  one  spiritual,  the  other 
material,  but  both  entirely  human  and  real.  It  will 
be  on  one  side  of  it  a  social  religion  :  on  the  other 
side  of  it  a  religious  Socialism. 


THE    END 


Printed  by  R.  &  R.  CI.ARK,  LIMITED,  Edinburgh. 


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